The Week That Was

On the morning of August 22, Benjamin Wittes livestreamed in front of John Bolton’s house where there appeared to be a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) search underway.

Wittes responded to the FBI’s search of former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s house. Wittes suggested that Bolton’s refusal to go through the full prepublication process when publishing “The Room Where It Happened” places him in a more precarious position than other former government officials the Trump administration has targeted because he took a legitimate risk, but concluded that the case against him would ultimately collapse under legal scrutiny.

On August 18 at 3 pm ET, Wittes sat down with Mykhailo Soldatenko, Anastasiia Lapatina, and Eric Ciramella to discuss President Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, the White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and what this all means for the end of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Soldatenko—in anticipation of Zelensky’s meeting with Trump in the Oval Office—examined three issue areas Ukraine and its Western partners should weigh following the Alaska summit with Putin: a ceasefire versus a peace agreement, varying territorial demands, and security guarantees for Ukraine.

Deborah Housen-Couriel and Asaf Lubin analyzed the European Court of Human Rights’s decision in Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia. Housen-Couriel and Lubin explained that the decision—which found Russia responsible for a vast array of human rights violations—recognizes that the right to privacy applies during war, significantly limiting the ability of militaries to collect data in the age of digital conflict.

Anderson sat down with Lubin and Housen-Couriel to take stock of the European Court of Human Rights' decision in Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia, what the decision means for the future of war, and more.

Bower chronicled the temporary restraining order hearing before Judge Ana Reyes in District of Columbia v. Donald J. Trump—a suit over Trump’s attempts to seize control of the Metropolitan Police Department and install an “emergency police commissioner” to direct District policing. 

Wittes contended that the D.C. Council should consider amending a municipal law about the defacement of public property—not because the constitutional question at play is particularly profound, but because it would allow citizens an avenue to express discontent about issues such as the federal occupation of the District.

Wittes recounted his recent exchange with the U.S. Secret Service during his chalking operation outside the Russian embassy, arguing that sending Secret Service to prevent sidewalk chalking is not only a degradation of the badge, but also indicative that so-called changes in policy are not necessarily changes to the law, but rather the whims of the current administration.

Wittes sat down with Bower, Mirasola, and Roger Parloff to discuss Trump’s attempt to seize control of the Metropolitan Police Department, the bench trial in Newsom v. Trump, litigation over freezing federal funds, and more.

Wittes—reflecting on a panel in which he, Ruth Marcus, and Jack Goldsmith all raised alarm over the current state of the Department of Justice—weighed the magnitude of this exchange and asked how the integrity of the Department can be restored when the dominant American political faction has sought to undermine traditional norms of justice. 

Mary Ford shared the text of the State Department’s 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

Katherine Pompilio shared the text of the ruling in the civil case of People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump et al.

Ford shared the text of a ruling by the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. A federal judge found that Alina Habba, New Jersey’s acting U.S. attorney, had been serving without legal authority since July 1.

On August 22 at 4 pm ET, Wittes sat down with Bower, Parloff, and James Pearce to discuss legal challenges to Habba’s appointment to be U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss criminal charges against him, and more.

Yuval Shany and Amichai Cohen—following the Israeli government’s unanimous decision to remove Attorney General (AG) Gali Baharav-Miara from office—broke down Baharav-Miara’s clashes with Israeli ministers, and emphasized that firing the AG not only represents an attack on the rule of law, but threatens a full-fledged constitutional crisis. 

Safia Southey examined the legal framework to hold private security contractors accountable for harming civilians, and argued that although there is legal precedent for prosecuting militants of a company and not a flag, translating that to timely prosecutions of contractors who have killed Gazan civilians has been slow and has allowed for the bloodshed to continue. 

Aidan Powers-Riggs and Sam Bresnick compared American and Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) advancements, arguing that Washington and Beijing’s race to achieve national AI supremacy may push Chinese President Xi Jinping to invade Taiwan with the aim of achieving two strategic objectives: Taiwanese “reunification” with mainland China and surpassing the U.S. on the AI playing field.

Kevin Frazier and Rozenshtein sat down with Nathan Lambert and Keegan McBride to discuss the current state of Open AI model development, the security risks posed by the shift to open source, what this transition means for the global AI ecosystem, and more.

Angelo Toma explained that in the age of AI, the definition of foreign interference should be broadened to include algorithmic effects on the public sphere. Toma emphasized that current international law is ill-equipped to respond to algorithmic foreign interference (AFI), and identified four ways policymakers can address the legal ambiguity surrounding AFI. 

Justin Sherman sat down with Adam Chan to discuss the FCC’s new guidance on submarine cables, the role of subsea cables in the U.S. telecommunications supply chain in an age of AI, why Washington wants to limit Chinese influence on U.S.-tied cables, and more.

In the latest edition of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discussed the relationship between Russian cybersecurity firms and Moscow since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russians’ forced exodus to a new messenger app created by a state-controlled internet company, London’s backdown on an order that would have required Apple to give the U.K. access to encrypted American iCloud data, and more.

Rush Doshi and William Henagan argued that Congress and the executive branch must work together to reauthorize critical foreign and domestic instruments of statecraft, such as the Defense Production Act, or risk losing state capacity and falling behind China technologically and economically. 

William Byrd assessed the Taliban’s policies after four years of governing Afghanistan, and argued that despite a stagnant economy and severe social and gender restrictions, the group has a firm stronghold on power. Byrd cautioned, however, that analysts should not turn their heads from Kabul, emphasizing that historical precedent demonstrates that irrespective of the current political environment, regime change in Afghanistan can be difficult to predict.

Alex Whiting reviewed Yvonne McDermott’s book entitled, “Proving International Crimes.” Whiting argued that while McDermott was right to use truth and fairness as normative principles in her evaluation of the law and practice of proving crimes at the International Criminal Court (ICC), she mistakenly overlooked the significance of efficiency—a metric the ICC scores poorly on—in her final assessment of the court. 

And in the latest installment of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Haddon Barth raised alarm over Syrian President Ahmed al-Shaarma’s exclusion of key political parties from the country’s new ruling coalition, and suggested the West use its leverage over Damascus to encourage the creation of a more representative political authority.