Hello From Miami

Where the weather is warm, the food is good, and nobody wears dog shirts

Good Morning:

---

Yesterday, on #DogShirtTV, there was no #DogShirtTV, because I took the day off.

Friday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Mike Feinberg and I observed Dan Bongino’s departure from the FBI by discussing all the damage he’s managed to do in the last ten months:

---

The Situation

In Friday’s “The Situation” column, I examine the legality of projecting an unflattering picture of FBI Director Kash Patel onto the external walls of the FBI’s headquarters at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. If I do say so myself, it’s superb column, and you should read it:

Most of all, I am laying out my thinking because I want people to be aware of the law in this area. People ask me frequently about the legality of projection operations. I am not a lawyer—and more particularly, not your lawyer—but I do think people should be generally aware of what expressive activity they can and can’t undertake. To the extent others who are contemplating aggressive protest activity might benefit from my thinking on this subject—which, to be clear, I am not saying or implying is informed by any legal advice I may or may not have received—I consider it a matter of public service to make that thinking available to others who might find it useful.

You ready?

---

Friday On Lawfare

Compiled by Isabel Arroyo

Inside Trump’s Second-Term National Security Strategy

Loren Voss analyzes the prioritization of national security threats, the rationale for international cooperation, and the overarching vision of America conveyed in the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy.

The strategy admits it has a purposefully narrower focus, and as a result, a shorter time horizon than previous NSSs: the United States is only concerned about the affairs of countries if their activities “directly threaten our interests.” There is no focus on indirect threats that may later threaten American interests, much less on building or maintaining a stable international system for long-term security.

The NSS does provide some concrete details on how this administration thinks about America’s place in the world. The document may only be 33 pages, but there are many novel one-liners and potentially conflicting concepts that warrant analysis in more detail than is possible here. However, three key questions provide a substantial overview of the America First foreign policy, demonstrate crucial gaps, and identify striking differences from previous NSSs.

Why the Government Keeps Failing to Re-Indict Letitia James

Molly Roberts parses the government’s third proposed indictment of Letitia James, which an Alexandria grand jury rejected and made public. Roberts explains how the revised indictment compares to previously proposed indictments, as well as why the government’s efforts keep falling short.

The new indictment, similarly, zeroes in on the rider as the basis of one of its false statement counts. This time, it doesn’t mention rental to a family of three—probably because the family in question, as the New York Times reported shortly after the initial indictment, has turned out to be James’s own grandniece and her children, who appear to have lived in the house for years almost entirely rent-free. Indeed, when the indictment introduces the existence of the rider, it doesn’t mention rental at all; it merely says that James “never had any intention of occupying and using” the property “as a second home.”

This focus on occupancy frames the rest of the new indictment. But in this instance, it doesn’t resolve the old indictment’s central problem: There’s no evidence that James acted contrary to the rider’s specific requirements. And to have made a false statement to a financial institution, she would have to have actually stated or certified something false.

Algorithmic Optimism, Democratic Reality

Roy L. Austin Jr. reviews Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders’s, “Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship.” Austin highlights the book’s accessible explanation of artificial intelligence’s potential benefits and harms to democracy and notes that a number of the authors’ proposed safeguards are either vague or already obsolete.

Ultimately, Schneier and Sanders offer less of a road map than a mirror. They show us how optimistic visions of technological progress revert to human struggles over power, fairness, and truth. AI will not save democracy unless democracy first saves itself—by insisting on accuracy, accountability, and moral courage from those who wield both algorithms and authority. In the end, the book is an urgent warning: Governments must make hard choices about AI governance, or else those choices will be made for them by private actors. Given the accelerating pace of AI adoption, the luxury of delay may already be gone.

Dumb and Dumber: Russia’s State-Backed ‘Hacktivists’

In the latest issue of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discusses U.S. sanctions on two Russian state-backed hacktivist groups, a wiper attack on a Venezuelan state-run oil company, U.S. dependency on Chinese-made renewable energy technologies, and more.

CARR’s victims included public drinking water systems across several states in the U.S., resulting in damage to controls and the spilling of hundreds of thousands of gallons of drinking water. CARR also attacked a meat processing facility in Los Angeles in November 2024, spoiling thousands of pounds of meat and triggering an ammonia leak in the facility. CARR has attacked U.S. election infrastructure during U.S. elections, and websites for U.S. nuclear regulatory entities, among other sensitive targets.

At first glance that sounds impressive, but on the scale of the entire United States these are inconsequential. That’s less than one Olympic-sized pool of water, and the indictment of one of CARR’s members, Victoria Dubranova, alleges that the meat processing facility incident resulted in “more than $5,000 in damages.”

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, Tyler McBrien sits down with Gauri Bahuguna, Setareh Ghandehari, Nayna Gupta, and Paromita Shah to discuss why the government outsources the critical immigration enforcement functions of deportation, interdiction, and detention to the private sector, how that outsourcing evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry, and the recent release of Lawfare and SITU’s joint podcast “Deportation, Inc.”

Videos

On Lawfare Live, I sit down with Voss, Anna Bower, and Eric Columbus to discuss the D.C. Circuit’s staying a D.C. district court order that had blocked the deployment of National Guard members in D.C., updates in Dan Richman’s suit seeking the return of material seized by the government during its investigation of James Comey, and more.

---

Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the ant, seen here walking off with a diamond from a wholesaler’s desk:

In honor of today’s Beast, please imagine what the other ants in the colony must have thought when this ant showed up with its contribution to the evening meal.

---

Neither the werewolf nor the small child is eligible to be the #BeastOfTheDay, but I—EJ Wittes—have found myself thoroughly charmed by this painting of an interaction between the two: