Last month, Tamara Cofman Wittes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and Brian Egan, former legal advisor to the State Department and National Security Council, participated in the Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens Memorial Lecture at the UC Hastings Law School. Ambassador Stevens, who died tragically in the attack against the U.S. special mission in Benghazi in 2012, was a proud alumnus of UC Hastings. In his memory, his family generously endowed an annual lecture on a current topic in foreign relations.

This year's event featured a panel discussion with Cofman Wittes and Egan, moderated by Professor Chimène Keitner, on U.S. law and policy in the Middle East. The conversation takes a step back from current events to look at the broader strategic landscape following the U.S. withdrawal from Syria.

Brian Kalt is a professor of law at Michigan State University. In 2012, he wrote "Constitutional Cliffhangers, " a book about all of the gaps in and the potentially disruptive interpretations of the text of the U.S. Constitution. His new book, "Unable: The Law, Politics, and Limits of Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment," is about the mere 270 words that comprise that section. David Priess spoke with Brian about the need for something better than what the original Constitution said about presidential incapacity; the drafting of the 25th Amendment and the discussions around its various provisions; how the media, TV shows, movies, and books often get important parts of the 25th Amendment wrong; and how an invocation of the 25th Amendment's 4th section would actually work.

It's the week it all went public. What had been dry pages of deposition transcript turned into live witnesses, sometimes many of them a day, in front of the House impeachment investigation. It was a lot of material, and we assembled quite the group to break it all down for you. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Scott R. Anderson, Susan Hennessey, Margaret Taylor, and Alina Polyakova to talk about what's happened this week, the new information we got and what it means that we have it all live in person, the foreign policy implications, disinformation, and what comes next as impeachment rolls on.

On Thursday, Fiona Hill, the former National Security Council Russia adviser, and David Holmes, counselor for political affairs at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, testified before the House Intelligence Committee. Here is the testimony of Hill and Holmes with no member-infighting, no speechifying, and no unnecessary fluff. 

In a new episode of Lawfare's Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation in the run-up to the 2020 election, Quinta Jurecic, Evelyn Douek, and Alina Polyakova, spoke with Ben Nimmo, the director of investigations at Graphika. They talked about how disinformation works; how a researcher knows where to look to find disinformation; how to tell when a strange pattern of tweets or Facebook posts is actually a disinformation campaign; and whether it's possible to counter these campaigns effectively, or if this work is just a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.

The evening testimony on Nov. 20 extended into the night, so we are bringing the podcast version to you this morning. The House Intelligence Committee heard from Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper and Under Secretary of State David Hale. We’ve taken out all the grandstanding and all the repetition, so you can just listen to the portions of the testimony that you need to hear.

It was another exciting day at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified in the impeachment inquiry. While two more officials testified in a second hearing after Sondland, we thought his testimony was important enough to bring you ASAP. Here is the testimony of Amb. Sondland in the impeachment inquiry with no member-infighting, no speechifying, and no unnecessary fluff. 

Here are some time-stamps to guide your listening:

Sondland opening:
00:00:59

Democratic Counsel (and Chairman Schiff)
00:37:15

Republican Counsel (and Ranking Member Nunes)
1:23:30

Democratic Counsel (and Chairman Schiff)
2:07:15

Republican Counsel (and Ranking Member Nunes)
2:40:30

Member Questions:
3:00:00

In the afternoon of Nov. 20, the committee heard from Tim Morrison, the former senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council, and Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine. 

At Lawfare, we have taken out all the unnecessary speeches, partisan bickering, and repetition to bring you just the portions of the testimony you need to hear. 

On the morning of Nov. 20, the committee heard testimony from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, U.S. Army officer and the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, and Jennifer Williams, a foreign service officer detailed to the Vice President's staff.

We have taken out all the unnecessary speeches, partisan bickering, and repetition to bring you just the portions of the testimony you need to hear.

On Monday, Benjamin Wittes moderated a discussion with Senator Mark Warner and Representative Jim Himes at NYU Law School as part of the "Catching the Cybercriminal: Reforming Global Law Enforcement" conference sponsored by the Center for Cybersecurity at NYU, the Journal of National Security Law and Policy, and Third Way. Sen. Warner is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the co-founder of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, and Rep. Himes is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. They talked about the state of cybercrime, whether cybercriminals could be caught, and what more law enforcement in the United States should be doing to curb malicious cyberattacks.

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