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Outlet profile

Lawfare

U.S. center-left (legal and national-security commentary)

Owned byPublished by the Lawfare Institute, a nonprofit (501(c)(3)) founded in 2014. Wittes is president, Chesney is treasurer and Goldsmith is secretary. It has long been published in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. It has no corporate or individual owner.
FundingNonprofit funding from donations and grants, plus some revenue from podcasts, events and sponsorships. It runs reader end-of-year giving appeals. A donor list was not available in the sources I consulted, so specific funders are not named here. Critics, such as a Daily Wire piece, have said it failed to disclose some of its own conflicts of interest.
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

Lawfare began in 2010 as a blog founded by Robert Chesney (University of Texas), Jack Goldsmith (Harvard) and Benjamin Wittes (Brookings). It focused on legal questions in counterterrorism and national security. The Lawfare Institute was created in 2014 as the nonprofit publisher, and the site is published in cooperation with Brookings. Wittes is editor in chief, and Chesney and Goldsmith are founding editors. Goldsmith is a former George W. Bush-era Justice Department official, and the founders have mixed ideological backgrounds. The site has grown into a large operation with a podcast network, live events and a large contributor base. It became widely read on Russia-related investigations, the Trump impeachments, and the January 6 and classified-documents prosecutions. Since 2025 it has centered coverage on litigation over the Trump administration, including the Justice Department, the Pentagon, immigration and election cases. Wittes and other editors are openly critical of many administration actions. Critics on the right call it partisan, and supporters point to its legal expertise and its mix of authors. It has also published pieces by administration-aligned voices and by authors who disagree with each other, though its overall tone on current executive-branch conduct is critical.

Sources

  1. Lawfare (website) – Wikipedia
  2. Lawfare Masthead
  3. Lawfare Media – InfluenceWatch
  4. Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, November 6
  5. Lawfare Media homepage
  6. Daily Wire: This Liberal Outlet Attacked Trump For Conflicts Of Interest. It Didn't Disclose Its Own.

Profile compiled 2026-11-06; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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