Lawfare (blog)

Lawfare is an American blog dedicated to national security issues, published by the Lawfare Institute in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. It has received attention for articles on Donald Trump's presidency. The blog was started in September 2010 by Benjamin Wittes (a former editorial writer for The Washington Post), Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith, and University of Texas at Austin law professor Robert Chesney. Goldsmith was the head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the George W. Bush administration's Justice Department, and Chesney served on a detention-policy task force in the Obama administration. Its writers include law professors, law students, and former George W. Bush and Barack Obama administration officials. Lawfare coverage of intelligence and legal matters related to the Trump administration has brought the blog significant increases in readership and national attention. In January 2017, the website's traffic was up by 1,101% from 12 months before. Executive Order 13769 and Reactions to Executive Order 13769 In January 2017 President Donald Trump tweeted "LAWFARE" and quoted a line from one of its blog posts that criticized the reasoning in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that blocked Trump's first refugee-and-travel ban. Trump tweeted the excerpt minutes after the line was quoted on Morning Joe. Wittes, who supported the court ruling, criticized Trump for the tweet, asserting that Trump distorted the argument presented in the article. Wittes also wrote that it was disturbing that Trump cited the line "with apparently no idea who the author was or what the publication was, and indeed without reading the rest of the article", and that no one in the White House vetted the tweet. Dismissal of James Comey On May 18, 2017, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes was the principal source of an extensive New York Times report about President Trump's interactions with FBI Director James Comey, who is a friend of Wittes, and how those interactions related to Comey's subsequent firing.