The Lawfare Podcast · The Lawfare Institute

Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, March 6

March 9, 2026·1 hr 38 min·5 clips

A Google shareholder sues to stop TikTok's deal, arguing it violates national security law.

Host Benjamin Wittes convenes Lawfare senior editors Alan Rosenstein, Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff, and Public Service Fellow Troy Edwards for a wide-ranging legal analysis session recorded on March 6, 2026. The first segment covers a new lawsuit challenging TikTok's qualified divestiture under PAFACA. Alan Rosenstein explains that plaintiff Tony Tan, a Google retail shareholder, argues the deal with a consortium of American and foreign investors does not constitute a genuine divestiture because ByteDance is licensing its algorithm to the new entity. Rosenstein identifies standing as the primary legal obstacle, since the government will argue a retail Google investor lacks the particularized injury required, and redressability as a secondary challenge. He notes the case becomes significant if it survives motions to dismiss and reaches discovery. The panel then turns to the Anthropic versus DOD dispute. Rosenstein reports that DOD formally designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk under 10 USC 3252 and FASCSA, requiring Anthropic to file in both California and the DC Circuit. Critically, the formal designation is narrower than Hegseth's initial social media post, which had purported to ban any DOD contractor from having any commercial relationship with Anthropic, a provision that would have cut Anthropic off from Amazon and Google cloud services. The narrower designation means Anthropic faces hundreds of millions in lost defense contracts but not an existential threat. Rosenstein notes the irony that Claude is actively being used in military operations in Iran even as DOD designates its maker a supply chain risk. Wittes reads Claude's own analysis of the dispute, which references Lawfare's coverage and characterizes the supply chain designation as a tool meant for foreign adversaries being used against an American company. Troy Edwards covers 30 additional arrests in the Don Lemon case, noting that at least one defendant was arrested while overseas on vacation, prompting questions about government motivations given that detention hearings have already gone against the government multiple times. The court rejected the government's request for a complex case designation but acknowledged voluminous discovery. Roger Parloff discusses the DOJ's reversal on dropping appeals in the law firm executive order cases, where the government filed a voluntary motion to dismiss, news organizations reported the story, and then the government reversed course, apparently after Trump or Stephen Miller objected. Parloff notes the DC Circuit will now hear the law firm cases the same day as the Mark Zaid security clearance case. He also covers the conclusion of the Biden auto-pen investigation, where prosecutors could not identify what crime had been committed and additionally recognized absolute presidential immunity would apply regardless. Molly Roberts reports on the Florida Bar's investigation of Lindsay Halligan, which the bar initially appeared to confirm before later denying any pending investigation existed. The alleged misconduct relates to Halligan's conduct in the James Comey and Letitia James prosecutions, including misstatements of law at grand jury proceedings and presentation of attorney-client privileged information.

As heard by us

A dense legal roundtable that keeps the focus on authority, immunity, and the questions the panel cannot avoid.

Lawfare Live moves between the newly filed TikTok suit and the Biden autopen inquiry, and it does best when it stays close to the questions the panel cannot dodge: what crime, if any, was actually identified, whether the conduct at issue was official, and how far absolute…

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Why you'd press play

You want the TikTok suit and the autopen investigation unpacked by actual lawyers.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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