Lawfare Group

Lawfare Group is a radical group of leftist lawyers in Washington, D.C. that, according to its website, operate in "that nebulous zone in which actions taken or contemplated to protect the nation interact with the nation’s laws and legal institutions." Its founder is Benjamin Wittes and is associated with the Brookings Institution. It sends out a daily newsletter called the Lawfareblog.

During the Obama administration the Lawfare group:

• (1) weaponized the IRS for political targeting;
• (2) weaponized the DOJ and FBI for political targeting;
• (3) weaponized the intelligence community for political activism;
• (4) created new legal theories around ‘disparate impact’ to weaponize the National Labor Relations Board; and generally used embedded officials to advance far-left political interests across the spectrum of government.

After the 2016 presidential election the Lawfare group immediately sought to:

• (1) delegitimize the presidency of Donald Trump;
• (2) delegitimize National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn;
• (3) target, disempower and isolate Attorney General Jeff Sessions;
• (4) delegitimize AG Bill Barr and the institution of the FBI outside their control;
• (5) delegitimize DHS, Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE);
• (6) delegitimize Justice Brett Kavanaugh and any institution or office that would now be removing or overturning their former Lawfare constructs;
• (7) hired on as staff to House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler's impeachment probe.

Lawfare Alliance

The Lawfare alliance includes: James Comey, former FBI legal counsel James Baker (DOJ), Comey’s leaking buddie Daniel Richman; former DOJ-NSD lawyer David Laufman (who also represented Monica McLean, Christine Blasey Ford’s FBI bestie and narrative engineer friend), Deputy AG Sally Yates, FBI lead agent Peter Strzok, FBI counsel Lisa Page; Obama administration lawyer Norm Eisen; criminal defense attorney Barry Berke; former SDNY U.S. Attorney Daniel Goldman; Mueller lead Andrew Weissmann and the Mueller team of lawyers, all of them -and more- are connected to the Lawfare group; and this network provides the sounding board for all of the weaponized approaches, including the various new legal theories outlined within the Weissmann-Mueller Report, and a host of current and former FBI and DOJ foot-soldiers.

Fusion GPS is part of the Lawfare network as a distribution hub for research information needed by the journalists who are writing on behalf of the Lawfare need. Ezra Klein’s “Journo-List”; the email group of 400+ reporters for multiple media outlets who collectively collaborated on stories.

The insurance policy

Benjamin Wittes was the first published reference to as "insurance policy" should Trump win, after Strzok used the term to explain the reason for FISA abuse to Lisa Page. Wittes wrote, {{quotebox "The point is that there is no reason at this stage to imagine that the legislature will be a viable venue for push-back, which is a shame considering the powerful set of tools at its disposal.

The Coalition of All Democratic Forces should certainly see what kind of use it might make of the legislature, but realistically, we should probably expect that the coalition’s job in Congress will be to prevent Trump from passing anti-democratic legislation. That is, the task in Congress will be a negative one of denying Trump the use of the Article I powers, not the positive one of the coalition’s using them itself.

That leaves the tool that will certainly be available: the courts. The courts have a few obvious advantages, starting with hundreds of independent judges of both parties whom Trump cannot remove from office and who don’t have to face his supporters in forthcoming elections."}}

Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were regular readers of the Lawfareblog. Three days before Strzok officially opened a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, Strzok and Lisa Page had this exchange:

• 00:36:58, Thu OUTBOX Lisa Page: Ha. First line made me smile. \n\nWhat Does the US Government Know About Russia and the DNC Hack? -Lawfare\nhttps://www.lawfareblog.com/what-does-us-government-know-about-russia-and-dnc-hack

The first line of the article reads, "Potentially unpleasant news for Jim Comey: We need you to intervene in the 2016 election again."

• 00:42:34, Thu INBOX Strzok: Interesting. Good comments about Comey, too\n\nTrump and the Powers of the American Presidency, Part III -Lawfare\nhttps://www.lawfareblog.com/trump-and-powers-american-presidency-part-iii

See also

• Left Inside/Outside Project