Democracy & Rule of Law
Elections
895 Articles
Campaign Finance Law: When “Collusion” with a Foreign Government Becomes a Crime
Commentary on Russian intervention in the 2016 elections has included one confidently expressed and perhaps growing view: that there may be a scandal there, but no conceivable…
Q & A With Citizen Lab on “Tainted Leaks” and Russia’s Disinformation Campaign
On Thursday, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab published evidence of a dangerous new twist in the war against truth. Russia-linked hackers, dubbed CyberBerkut, have…
Russia and a Divided United States: What Comes After Trump?
While the United States, along with its Western allies, became preoccupied with post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, global counterterrorism operations, and the aftermath of…
Can Flynn Assert a Fifth Amendment Privilege to Withhold Documents?
The news that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor and campaign aide, has refused to comply with a Senate Intelligence Committee subpoena…
The Drip, Drip of Obstruction News
The news yesterday that Donald Trump asked the Director of National Intelligence, Daniel Coats, and the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael Rogers, to publicly…
Trump’s Disclosure Did Not Break the Law
Since the Washington Post revealed that President Trump had provided “classified” information to Russian diplomats, there have been three rounds of reactions. The first comments…
Politicians Keep Buying Kris Kobach’s Ideas Despite Track Record of Failure
Kris Kobach, the Secretary of State for Kansas and an anti-immigrant and vote-suppressing activist, has been angling for a job in the Trump administration since the election. But…
Connecting the Dots: Political Microtargeting and the Russia Investigation
In many respects, we’re all in the dark when it comes to the ongoing Russia investigations. Behind closed doors, what are congressional and FBI investigators learning? What new…
Norms Watch: Tracking the Erosion of Democratic Traditions (May 12-19)
Editor’s Note: Welcome to the latest installment of Norms Watch, our series tracking both the flouting of democratic norms by the Trump administration and the erosion of…
Comey’s Subtle Hints About What’s Going on Behind the Scenes
James Comey really is the master of the contemporaneous record. He’s been laying down a breadcrumb trail of clues about what’s going on behind the scenes not just in his memos,…
The Downward Spiral
Last week, I questioned whether President Donald Trump might have potentially engaged in the obstruction of justice when he fired then-FBI Director James Comey. Yesterday, another…
A Prosecutor’s View: The Evidence of Trump’s Obstruction is Now Compelling
There has been considerable discussion over the last week about whether President Donald Trump committed the crime of obstruction of justice when he fired James Comey as director…