The Lawfare Podcast

Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, who now is a novelist and a writer. Most recently, though, Alex has taken up a different task. She is the leader of #YachtWatch, an effort to track down and monitor the movements of massive yachts belonging to Russian oligarchs. #YachtWatch has become a popular way of following and staying engaged with the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Jacob Schulz spoke with Alex about #YachtWatch, how she conducts the project and what its value is in an oversaturated media ecosystem.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From February 8, 2020: Russia continues to sporadically poke its head into American media headlines, whether it be for its role in Syria or for anxieties about fresh election interference in 2020. But these news stories seldom provide a window into life in Putin’s Russia. Jacob Schulz sat down with Joshua Yaffa, the Moscow correspondent for the New Yorker, to talk about his new book, "Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia." The book gives a series of portraits of prominent figures within Putin’s Russia and details the compromises they make to maintain their status and goodwill with the Kremlin. They talked about this framework as a way to understand Russia, what Putin’s rule looks like on the peripheries of the country, and about a couple of the fascinating characters that animate the book.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're bringing you the second episode of Lawfare’s new narrative series, The Aftermath, which deals specifically with the early phases of the criminal investigation launched by the FBI, even as the perpetrators of the riot were heading home. The episode features interviews with former FBI and Justice Department official Chuck Rosenberg, New York Times reporter Katie Benner, and Seamus Hughes of the George Washington University Program on Extremism. The episode tells the story of how the investigation got started, the challenges investigators faced in a nationwide manhunt featuring thousands of suspects and perpetrators, and the internal struggle that had just taken place within the Justice Department itself.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, one of the groups receiving the most attention for its participation in the insurrection on the Hill was the Oath Keepers, a right-wing extremist group that's been in existence since 2009 but has taken on an increased public profile since the riot last year. In early January, the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, along with 10 others, was indicted in U.S. federal court for seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol breach. To discuss the group, its history, and its role on Jan. 6, Jacob Schulz sat down with Sam Jackson, an assistant professor at the University of Albany and the author of a 2020 book about the Oath Keepers and their ideology.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Open-source investigations—sometimes referred to as OSINT, or open-source intelligence—have been crucial to public understanding of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. An enormous number of researchers have devoted their time to sifting through social media posts, satellite images, and even Google Maps to track what’s happening in Ukraine and debunk false claims about the conflict. This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, we devoted the show to understanding how open-source investigations work and why they’re important. Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke to Nick Waters, the lead on Justice and Accountability at Bellingcat, one of the most prominent groups devoted to conducting these types of investigations. They talked about the crucial role played by open-source investigators in documenting the conflict in Syria—well before the war in Ukraine—and how the field has developed since its origins in the Arab Spring and the start of the Syrian Civil War. And Nick walked us through the mechanics of how open-source investigations actually happen, and how social media platforms have helped—and hindered—that work.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alexander Stubb is the former prime minister, foreign minister and finance minister of Finland. Back in 2008, after the Russian invasion of Georgia, he worked on the ceasefire between Russia and Georgia, giving him a valuable perspective on much of what's going on today. He sat down with David Priess for a conversation covering his experience negotiating that ceasefire in 2008, his experienced impressions of Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov, the differences between this Russian action in Ukraine now and its previous aggressions, and what it all means for European unity and for Finland's place in NATO.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's been an eventful week in the department of criminal cases arising out of Jan. 6. We had the first jury verdict convicting an alleged 1/6 perpetrator, an Oath Keeper guilty plea for seditious conspiracy, the indictment of the head of the Proud Boys, and a judge rejecting the lead charge the government has used in a whole lot of criminal cases arising out of the Capitol insurrection. To catch up, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Roger Parloff, who has been covering 1/6 criminal matters for Lawfare. They talked about the news of the last couple of weeks, focusing particularly on Judge Carl Nichols’s controversial ruling about the availability of an obstruction prosecution to the government.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine has undermined some of the fundamental assumptions underlying the security of Europe through much of the post-World War II era. As a result, several European nations have begun to consider dramatic changes in how they approach national security, both individually and collectively.To better understand how the war in Ukraine is reshaping the European security order, Scott R. Anderson sat down with two of his colleagues from the Brookings Institution: Célia Belin, a visiting fellow at Brookings and a former official in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Constanze Stelzenmüller, the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and trans-Atlantic Relations in the Center on the United States and Europe.They discussed how the Ukraine conflict is reshaping Europe's approach to security affairs, what this means for institutions like the European Union and NATO, and how these changes are likely to impact the fundamental debate over what it means to be a part of Europe. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From February 18, 2020: In what ways did American foreign policy fail to capitalize on victory in the Cold War? Andrew Bacevich, professor emeritus at Boston University and co-founder and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, tackles that question and more in "The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory." Jack Goldsmith sat down with Professor Bacevich to talk about his new book. The pair discussed the establishment consensus on American foreign policy, the state of civil-military relations, and the mission of the newly founded Quincy Institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From November 20, 2020: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (Ret.) is the Pritzker Military Fellow at the Lawfare Institute. You've heard his story, likely in his testimony in the impeachment proceedings for President Trump. But Benjamin Wittes sat down with him for a different reason—his substantive expertise in Eastern Europe policy, Russia matters and great power competition. They talked about the challenges the Biden administration will face as it tries to pick up the pieces the Trump administration has left it, how democracies can hang together and harden themselves against attacks from authoritarian regimes, what a good Russia policy looks like, how China fits in and how we can rebuild traditional American alliances.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.