Mary B. McCord

mmccord's picture

Mary B. McCord is currently Legal Director and Visiting Professor of Law at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law School. She is the former Acting Assistant Attorney General and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice and was a long-time federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Subscribe to this Lawfare contributor via RSS.

The Ukraine Connection

Armed Militias Are Taking Trump’s Civil War Tweets Seriously

Over the weekend, the president sent a tweet that seemed to warn of civil war if he were to be impeached and removed from office:

....If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Pastor Robert Jeffress, @FoxNews

Counterterrorism

The Christchurch Shooting: Domestic Terrorism Goes International

The United States has long built its approach to counterterrorism based on a fundamental distinction between “international terrorism” and “domestic terrorism.” The phrases were always misnomers to some degree, but the recent mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, has revealed just how unsuitable that distinction is for today’s terrorist threats.

Federal Law Enforcement

Bump Stocks Threaten Public Safety and National Security

For many Americans, the tragic killing of 58 Las Vegas concert-goers in October 2017 made all too vivid the dangers posed by bump stocks, attachments that convert semiautomatic firearms into automatic weapons. Although the Las Vegas shooter’s motive remains unclear, there’s no doubt that these devices in the hands of someone seeking to cause harm—whether based on personal grievances or domestic or international extremism—present a grave threat to security here in the homeland. U.S.

Federal Law Enforcement

It’s Time for Congress to Make Domestic Terrorism a Federal Crime

On Oct. 27, Robert Bowers launched an attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Penn., murdering 11 worshipers and injuring many others. The federal indictment against Bowers charges him with multiple counts of obstructing, by force and threat of force, “the free exercise of religious beliefs” resulting in death and bodily injury and involving the use of a dangerous weapon and attempts to kill.