Lawfare Live: Restoring Federal Government Ethics and the Rule of Law
In a new report titled “If It’s Broke, Fix It: Restoring Federal Government Ethics and Rule of Law,” seven ethics and good-government experts analyze the weaknesses in the federal government’s ethics and rule of law framework and propose solutions to fix the issues, which have come to head in the past four years.
On Tuesday, March 2, at 10:30 a.m.,
Lawfare and Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution will cohost a webinar to discuss the problems described by the report and the solutions the authors propose. Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes will sit down with Rep. Suzan DelBene; Amb. Norman Eisen (ret.), senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution; Rep. Mondaire Jones; Richard Painter, S. Walter Richey professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota Law School; Rep. John Sarbanes and Claudine Schneider, former congresswoman and founder of Republicans for Integrity, to tal
Published 23 December 2020
In his increasingly desperate bid to hang on to the White House, President Trump is reportedly contemplating invoking martial law to force the invalidation of the results of the election in four swing states, apparently inspired by remarks of the former and recently-pardoned National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Law professors Claire O. Finkelstein and Richard W Painter write that “While we deem the chances that Trump will actually follow through with the attempt to spark a military coup between now and January 20th
extremely low, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen should be prepared for such a contingency and play out the legal and enforcement implications in advance. Shocking and unprecedented though it would be, Rosen should be ready to go so far as to order federal law enforcement officers to arrest anyone, including, if necessary, the president, who has conspired to carry out this illegal plan.”