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The Lawfare Podcast: Trump’s Trials and Tribulations: Mr. Smith Goes to the Supreme Court, not the D.C. Circuit

Benjamin Wittes, Anna Bower, Roger Parloff, Steve Vladeck, Jen Patja
Saturday, December 16, 2023, 12:00 PM
Listen to this week's Trump's Trials and Tribulations now

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It's another edition of “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” recorded on Thursday before a live audience of Lawfare Material Supporters. This week, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff, Lawfare Legal Fellow Anna Bower, and special guest Steve Vladeck from the University of Texas School of Law. They discussed Jack Smith's petition to the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari “before judgment” on the question of presidential immunity. They talked about the Court's decision to weigh in on Fischer v. United States and the potential impact on Trump's criminal cases and the other Jan. 6 cases that involved the same statute. They talked about whether Trump's trial in D.C. will be delayed by the Supreme Court's consideration of the immunity question. They talked about the status of the civil suit by Georgia election workers against Rudy Giuliani, and they checked in to see what is new in Fulton County.

This is a live conversation that happens online every Thursday at 4:00pm Eastern Time. If you would like to come join and ask a question, be sure to visit Lawfare’s Patreon account and become a Material Supporter.


Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.
Anna Bower is Lawfare’s Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent. Anna holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Cambridge and a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School. She joined Lawfare as a recipient of Harvard’s Sumner M. Redstone Fellowship in Public Service. Prior to law school, Anna worked as a judicial assistant for a Superior Court judge in the Northeastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia. She also previously worked as a Fulbright Fellow at Anadolu University in Eskişehir, Turkey. A native of Georgia, Anna is based in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
Roger Parloff is a journalist based in Washington, D.C. In recent years, he has regularly contributed to Yahoo Finance and Air Mail News, and has also been published in The New York Times, ProPublica, New York, and NewYorker.com. For 12 years, he was the main legal correspondent at Fortune Magazine. He is an attorney who no longer practices. He is a senior editor at Lawfare.
Steve Vladeck is a professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law. A 2004 graduate of Yale Law School, Steve clerked for Judge Marsha Berzon on the Ninth Circuit and Judge Rosemary Barkett on the Eleventh Circuit. In addition to serving as a senior editor of the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, Steve is also the co-editor of Aspen Publishers’ leading National Security Law and Counterterrorism Law casebooks.
Jen Patja is the editor and producer of The Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.

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