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The Lawfare Podcast: Two Cities, Two Hearings

Quinta Jurecic, Anna Bower, Saraphin Dhanani, Hyemin Han, Jen Patja
Tuesday, August 29, 2023, 8:00 AM
What happened during the two Trump-related court hearings in Atlanta and D.C.? 

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

Yesterday, August 28, was a busy day in court. In federal court in Atlanta, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows made the argument for why the charges against him in Fulton County should instead be tried before a federal judge. And in Washington, D.C., Trump’s attorneys tangled with the special counsel’s office in a hearing in the Jan. 6 case, which resulted in Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduling a trial date for March 4, 2024.

Lawfare’s devoted team headed to both courtrooms—so we’re bringing you a double dispatch from both Georgia and D.C. Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with Anna Bower, who spent her day in the Georgia courtroom, and Saraphin Dhanani and Hyemin Han, who held down the fort in D.C., to talk through the two hearings.


Quinta Jurecic is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a senior editor at Lawfare. She previously served as Lawfare's managing editor and as an editorial writer for the Washington Post.
Anna Bower is a senior editor at Lawfare. Anna holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Cambridge and a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School. She joined Lawfare as a recipient of Harvard’s Sumner M. Redstone Fellowship in Public Service. Prior to law school, Anna worked as a judicial assistant for a Superior Court judge in the Northeastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia. She also previously worked as a Fulbright Fellow at Anadolu University in Eskişehir, Turkey. A native of Georgia, Anna is based in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
Saraphin Dhanani is the Legal Fellow at the Lawfare Institute. She previously worked at the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Ambassador for Human Rights and in the Markets Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She holds a B.A. from Wellesley College, where she was a Fellow and Ambassador at the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School, where she was the Senior Articles Editor of the Stanford Law Review.
Hyemin Han is a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School. She was previously an associate editor at Lawfare and an eviction defense paralegal in Boston. She holds a BA in government from Dartmouth College.
Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.

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