The Week That Was: All of Lawfare in One Post
Let's start with the Nunes memo.
Jack Goldsmith discussed the implications of the White House counsel’s cover letter to the release of the Nunes memo.
Carrie Cordero pondered the unintended consequences potentially created by the memo’s release.
Sophia Brill argued that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) could clear up whether it was misled—as the Nunes memo alleges it was—by the FBI and the Justice Department when they sought orders to surveil Carter Page. Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes filed an amicus brief with the FISC to urge the court to inform the public of whatever action it takes in response to the allegations made in the Nunes memo. Matthew Kahn posted the New York Times’s filing with the FISC requesting the release of the applications and orders which approved the surveillance of Carter Page.
During a business meeting on Monday, February 5, the House intelligence committee voted unanimously to release Democrats’ rebuttal to the Nunes memo. Shannon Togawa Mercer shared the now-public transcript of the meeting.
In broader L’Affaire Russe news, Bob Bauer contended that the constitutional argument that the president cannot be indicted puts the special counsel in the difficult position of being responsible both to Congress and to the executive.
Nora Ellingsen, Quinta Jurecic, Sabrina McCubbin, Mercer and Wittes wrote that more than 100 pages of declassified FBI communications reveal the bureau’s real reaction to the firing of former director James Comey.
Mieke Eoyang, Ben Freeman and Wittes shared their January polling data on public confidence in government on national security matters. They found that confidence remains stable.
Bauer argued that it is folly to dismiss—as many people do—President Trump’s demagogic practices as just “words” until some related “action” occurs.
Stewart Baker interviewed Susan Landau in this week’s Cyberlaw Podcast. The two discussed Landau’s new book “Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age.”
