Charlie Savage

From the chapter of my 2007 book TAKEOVER about the growing stacking the Supreme Court with former executive branch lawyers who came of age marinating in separation-of-powers disputes from a presidentialist perspective:

Reply to @charliesavage.bsky.social

When we came out of Syria in 2022 and landed at a military base, Graham got call and his demeanor changed and he moved away from the group to urgently talk. He had been subpoenaed to testify about calling Georgia’s Secretary of State when Trump was trying to overturn his loss of the 2020 election.

RIP Senator Lindsey Graham. I spoke with him many times over the years, primarily re war-on-terror detainee policy issues like Guantanamo & military commissions. He twice invited me to join congressional fact-finding trips to the war zone in Syria to scrutinize Kurdish-run prisons for ISIS detainees

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We talked less over time as detainee policy issues faded, but he invited me again in 2022 to go to Syria, this time to look at where ISIS wives and children were being detained. He thought it was a shameful disaster than countries were not taking them back. www.nytimes.com/2022/07/19/u...

ISIS Fighters’ Children Are Growing Up in a Desert Camp. What Will They Become? (Published 2022)

Leaving captured men, women and children in prisons and camps run by Kurds risks seeding a new global terrorism disaster, rights groups and the U.S. military warn.

Reply to @charliesavage.bsky.social

In my assessment, Graham started off as a pragmatic thinker (in a war you don’t torture captured enemies but you also don’t give them Miranda warnings/ lawyers before interrogating for intel) but hardened over the years into ideological dogma despite the lived experience that tribunals didn’t work.

Reply to @charliesavage.bsky.social

In the Bush/Obama years, Graham aligned himself with Senator John McCain. He was a staunch opponent of torture but a strong supporter of handling terrorism cases using military detention and commissions rather than the civilian criminal justice system. charliesavage.com/2015/10/powe...

Power Wars Document: Lindsey Graham’s grand bargain proposal over Guantanamo - Charlie Savage

This previously undisclosed document is a proposal Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, developed in 2009. It was a starting point for what became lengthy but unsuccessful negotiation...