The Lawfare Podcast

This past Monday, the criminal trial of Thomas Barrack began in federal court in the Eastern District of New York. Barrack, who served as an informal advisor to the 2016 Trump campaign and then as chair of Trump's inaugural committee, is alleged to have acted as a foreign agent of the United Arab Emirates. According to the indictment, Barrack acted as a back channel for the UAE to influence U.S. foreign policy. Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Alex Iftimie, a partner at the law firm Morrison Foerster, and a former Department of Justice attorney specializing in national security matters, including the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, and related statutes. They discussed the case against Barrack, the significance of the charges to broader enforcement strategy, and why foreign influence matters for U.S. national security. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Geoffrey Berman was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the Trump administration. He was appointed under peculiar circumstances, and he was fired under even more peculiar circumstances. He is now a partner at the law firm of Fried Frank, and he’s the author of the new book, “Holding the Line: Inside the Nation's Preeminent U.S. Attorney's Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department.” He joined Benjamin Wittes to discuss the book’s shocking revelations of political interference in the Southern District's work by Bill Barr, by Donald Trump, and by others in the Justice Department. They also talked about the pattern of political interference, the relationship between it and more famous cases, the efforts by senior Justice Department officials to shift gears after the 2020 election, and whether this is a story of fragility in the U.S. Attorney's office or strength. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On September 15, Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida issued two key rulings in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. She appointed Judge Raymond Dearie of the Eastern District of New York as the special master reviewing the documents and denied the Justice Department’s motion for a partial stay of her previous injunction barring the department from using the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in its criminal investigation. The next day, Friday, September 16, the Justice Department appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit for a partial stay of the September 15 ruling.Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down for a live conversation on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes and senior editors Scott Anderson and Alan Rozenshtein to talk through Cannon’s latest ruling. They recorded before the Justice Department filed its appeal, but the conversation is a useful breakdown of Cannon’s somewhat off-the-wall orders. Namely: what, exactly, is this judge doing? And where is the case headed next?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Of all of the Central Intelligence Agency's activities, paramilitary operations might remain the least understood. This, in part, is both a cause and a consequence of inaccurate portrayals of such work in prominent movies; it's also because fewer memoirs come from the CIA's Special Activities Division than from traditional human intelligence collectors and from analysts.David Priess chatted with former CIA officer Ric Prado about the fiction and the reality of CIA paramilitary operations, including stories Ric tells in his book, “Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior.” They spoke about what Hollywood gets wrong about intelligence work, Ric's escape as a child from Castro's Cuba, his path to a CIA career, differences between paramilitary operations and intelligence collection, his years of work with the Contras in Central America, the Counterterrorist Center (CTC) at CIA before and on 9/11, the work ethic in CTC after 9/11, why his book has substantial chunks of redacted text, and who he thinks played the best James Bond.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced by David Priess with Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo, with additional editing by Cara Shillenn. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From March 17, 2018: In 1963, John Feerick became a witness to and a framer of our constitutional history. Within two years of graduating from law school, Feerick had written an influential law review article on presidential disability and succession, joined the ABA’s blue-ribbon commission to create a solution to those problems, and became a confidant and an adviser to the members of Congress who wrote the 25th amendment.As many in the public wonder about the current president’s fitness, Matthew Kahn went up to Fordham Law School, where Feerick is now dean emeritus, for a conversation about the page of the constitution he helped write. They talked about how Dean Feerick got involved in the creation of the 25th amendment, how Congress settled on the scheme the amendment enshrines, where it still has gaps and ambiguity, and how political leadership and the public should understand it in modern times.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ken Starr, the former federal judge and independent counsel who became famous for his investigation of President Bill Clinton, died this week on September 13 at age 76. Starr was a complex and controversial figure: after running the Whitewater and Lewinsky investigations, he went on to serve as president of Baylor University, only to resign over the mishandling of a sex abuse scandal involving the university’s football team, and he would later go on to defend President Trump in Trump’s first impeachment.To think through Starr’s legacy, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic spoke with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes, who published a book on Starr, and Lawfare contributing editor Paul Rosenzweig, who worked with Starr on the Clinton investigation. They took a look back on the Starr investigation and how the probe shaped the culture and practice of presidential investigations in ways that are more relevant than ever in the Trump era.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dmitri Alperovitch is the founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a geopolitics think tank in Washington, and the impresario of the Geopolitics Decanted podcast. He joined Benjamin Wittes to talk through the Ukrainian offensive in Kharkiv Oblast last week. They discussed whether the Ukrainian retaking of large swaths of territory is a big deal, what’s going to come next, and if this is a prelude to a larger rout of Russian forces, to a negotiated settlement, or if something else is going to happen. They also talked about whether the Russians are running out of ammunition and people, or if the Ukrainian economy will collapse before victory.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amid the war and instability in Afghanistan over the last two decades, the opium industry has seen explosive growth. In fact, Afghanistan accounts for the vast majority of the world's opium supply. The Taliban vowed to crack down on the production of illicit drugs, and in March, they issued a total ban on opium cultivation, which has stripped many rural Afghans of their livelihoods. But in the meantime, drug prices have been increasing, making the production and trafficking of methamphetamines even more profitable. To discuss the situation, former Lawfare associate editor Tia Sewell sat down with Rupert Stone, an independent journalist who recently published a piece with the Atlantic Council entitled, “Afghanistan’s Drug Trade is Booming Under Taliban Rule.” They discussed how Afghanistan's drug trade has evolved under the Taliban, the growing problems of addiction, and how the Taliban's rule has affected the export and trafficking of illicit drugs in the broader region.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since his 1991 death, Rainer Sonntag has been remembered as a martyr by generations of neo-Nazis and other far-right activists, especially in his native Germany. Less discussed, however, is the fact that he was also a spy for the communist authorities of East Germany and their counterparts in the Soviet Union—and that a young KGB operative named Vladimir Putin played a prominent role in his rise to power. To learn more, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Leigh Baldwin, the editor of SourceMaterial, and independent journalist Sean Williams, who co-authored a recent article on the relationship between Putin and Sonntag for The Atavist Magazine, entitled “Follow the Leader.” They discussed the relationship between communist intelligence agencies and far-right German movements, how those movements reacted to the reunification of Germany, and what Putin might have learned from his early dalliances with foreign far-right political movements. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pakistan is experiencing one of the largest natural disasters in modern history. The massive floods there, combined with glacier melt, have led to one third of the country being submerged underwater with more than one million people displaced and tens of billions of dollars in damage.Lawfare publisher David Priess sat down with Erin Sikorsky, the director for the Center for Climate and Security, who has over a decade of experience previously in the U.S. intelligence community looking at issues like climate and security. They talked about the situation in Pakistan, its impact on the Pakistani military and security services, how the Pakistani military is being employed to help with flood relief, the impact on regional security and the ultimate impact on U.S. national security, and how we address climate change.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.