Resource person: Audra Bullard - office@clehighlands.com

Description:

Andrew Weissmann, a CLE favorite, and Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare, will discuss the Trump 2.0 administration’s impact on the United States Department of Justice, the FBI, the Intelligence Community and national security. Has the threat to liberal democracy and authoritarian capture that many predicted prior to the election materialized? If not, what “guardrails” have held, and can they continue to do so? If so, what strategies remain available to push back given the extraordinary legal powers delegated to the President in the Constitution and by Congress? How successful has Trump been in “reining in” the media and silencing those opposed to him, either by initiating criminal investigations or chilling their speech through civil proceedings? Weissmann and Wittes will assess the response of the courts to Trump’s assertions of executive power and his administration’s attempt at “structural deregulation” of administrative agencies. Expect a deep dive into the activities of the President, the administrative state and the courts by two of the country’s foremost thinkers about democracy, national security and the rule of law.

LOCATION TBD - MORE INFO TO COME!

Andrew Weissmann is a Professor of Practice at New York University School of Law. He served as a lead prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office and as Chief of the Fraud Section in the U.S. Department of Justice. He is the author of “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation.” He also served as General Counsel for the F.B.I., Director of the Enron Task Force, and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for 15 years in the Eastern District of New York, where he served as the Chief of the Criminal Division. He is a frequent MSNBC news contributor on matters related to federal and state prosecutions of high-profile political figures. He and Mary McCord are co-hosts of the podcast “Main Justice.”

Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief and co-founder in 2010 of Lawfare, a non-profit multimedia company addressing “Hard National Security Choices.” He is also a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution where he is the research director in public law. Wittes covered the Department of Justice for the Legal Times and was an editorial writer for the Washington Post from 1997 to 2006. He is the author of several books, including “Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump’s War on the World’s Most Powerful Office” (2020) with Susan Hennessey.

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