Putin Burns and Sunflowers Go Invisible

Trading one #SpecialMilitaryOperation for another

Good Morning:

I was very excited the other day when a package arrived from a gobo manufacturer with three new “Death Head Putin” gobos I had ordered. It was an experiment, I plan to use a lot of gobos over the next few months, both for the usual stuff and for more, uh, domestic plans. And gobos are expensive. A full-color glass gobo runs more than $400, so I’ve been interested in a cheaper ways to make these slides.

One company advertised that they could do full-color gobos in a heat-resistant plastic at a fraction of the price of a glass gobo. So I figured, why not try it? The worst that could happen is that the plastic gobo would burn up under the heat of Gripon the Gobo Projector and my house would go up in smoke, right? I ordered three just so I have would have room for error.

Well, folks, let me just tell you: Never compromise on gobo quality. On the left is the new “Death Head Putin” gobo. On the right is that same gobo after about 60 seconds of use. In the center is my second attempt after about 15 seconds of use. #NeverPlastic

I couldn’t blame the poor projector. Burning up Putin seems like a perfectly rational idea to me.

I ordered Death Head Putin in glass—at full price.

And then, because a weekend should never go without a #SpecialMilitaryOperation, I put the projector away:

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Friday on #DogShirtTV, I came on the show all fired up about Duolingo, and Alicia Wanless joined in. And the Greek Chorus joined in. We managed to complain about it for a full hour:

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The Situation

In Friday’s “The Situation” column, I argue that conservative justices’ skepticism of Trump’s tariffs during oral arguments in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Tariffs) is not surprising, not heartening, and in no way redemptive of the Court’s enabling of the destructiveness of the second Trump administration:

The longer The Situation drags on, the more things the Supreme Court will come to object to, and nobody should find that shocking, or redeeming.

The problem with the Court’s performance, rather, is the justices’ total lack of urgency about any of it, and their default position—reflected in oh-so-many emergency docket opinions—that the administration should be unmolested by the judiciary in tearing down the federal government in the meantime.

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Friday On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Isabel Arroyo

Trial Dispatch: The Comey Hearing of Nov. 5, 2025

Roger Parloff reports from a Nov. 5 hearing in the ongoing criminal trial of former FBI Director James Comey, in which parties sparred over the government’s request for a filter protocol to govern investigators’ review of potentially privileged material.

This hearing did not touch on either marquee issue overshadowing the Comey case: his motion to dismiss for vindictive and selective prosecution or his motion to dismiss (consolidated with a similar motion by defendant New York Attorney General Letitia James) alleging that indictment-signer Lindsey Halligan was not lawfully appointed as Interim U.S. Attorney. Rather, the centerpiece was a government request for a filter protocol that would enable investigators to comb through currently quarantined digital data gathered from prior searches of attorney and Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman without violating attorney-client privileges. Comey responded that there were more fundamental issues relating to the constitutionality of the searches in question that the court needed to address before reaching, if ever, the question of a filter protocol.

More Trouble for the Comey Indictment?

Anna Bower argues that Daniel Richman’s employment status at the FBI—which public records indicate expired halfway through 2016—may weaken the government’s case against Comey, which hinges on Comey’s authorizing someone “at the FBI” to act as an anonymous source.

But when you look beyond the litigation documents themselves, it turns out the government’s case may be even weaker than it seemed. Its flaws are compounded by an additional problem that warrants closer scrutiny: the timeline of Richman’s employment.

At the core of the prosecution’s argument is the claim that Comey authorized someone “at the FBI” to speak to reporters anonymously. The government asserts that Richman is that someone, and that he was at the FBI because he held the status of a special government employee “since 2015.” What the brief omits, however, is whether that status was continuous—or when it ended.

The Assassins and Their Allies: How Europe Helped Israel Hunt the Munich Killers

Daniel Byman reviews Aviva Guttmann’s “Operation Wrath of God: The Secret History of European Intelligence and Mossad’s Assassination Campaign,” which chronicles intelligence-sharing between Israel and Europe as Israel targeted Black September terrorists involved in the Munich massacre. Byman praises the book’s detail, insight, and value as a historical study of Israeli counterterrorism.

In the end, “Operation Wrath of God” stands as both a rich work of archival recovery and a sober study of counterterrorism’s operational complexities. Guttmann reconstructs with precision the interplay of vengeance, deterrence, and cooperation that defined Israel’s shadow war in Europe, providing a detailed picture of a campaign born of rage and necessity. Her account reveals not only the intelligence scaffolding that made such operations possible but also the ethical boundaries Israel once tried—however imperfectly—to uphold. In doing so, Guttmann invites readers to reconsider how democracies fight terror: through law and coordination, or through quiet violence that exacts its own enduring costs.

The Cyber Regime Change Pipe Dream

In the latest issue of the Seriously Risky Business cybersecurity newsletter, Tom Uren discusses the limits of cyber operations as a tool for regime change in Venezuela, the ways that unconstrained U.S. advertising technology endangers national security personnel around the world, how cybercriminals and organized crime groups are tag-teaming logistics companies to steal cargo, and more.

We’ve written many times about how the unconstrained collection, collation, and sale of geolocation data in particular is a national security risk for the United States. In one striking example, a Catholic substack publication identified a priest as a Grindr user through notionally anonymized app data supplied to it by a third party. In another example, researchers used smartphone data to track Securities and Exchange Commission personnel as they traveled around the country.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see how these relatively unsophisticated techniques could be used to identify and track U.S. national security personnel. But a new report from a group of European investigative journalists lays bare how this is a global risk not just constrained to the free-market yahoos in North America.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, in a live conversation on November 5, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Peter Harrell, Marty Lederman, and Kathleen Claussen to discuss oral arguments in the challenge to President Trump’s tariffs at the Supreme Court, the facts of the case, and how the justices may rule.

Videos

On Lawfare Live, I sat down with Scott R. Anderson, Bower, Parloff, Molly Roberts, Eric Columbus, and Loren Voss to discuss the criminal trial of the “D.C. Sandwich Guy,” who was charged with assaulting a federal officer; new developments in the criminal case against Comey; legal challenges to federalizing the National Guard, and more.

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the seal, seen here suffering repression for exercising its free speech rights:

Video Source

In honor of this poor, oppressed Beast, a very estimable Tumblr user has created this protest art:

In honor of today’s Beast, resist feline tyranny! Stand up for free speech!