Harry Litman is a lawyer, law professor, and legal commentator who served as both the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice. He is the creator, host, and executive producer of the Talking Feds franchise, which includes a roundtable podcast, weekly one-on-one discussions, the Talking Feds Substack and daily Talking Feds youtubes. He is the senior legal columnist at the New Republic and formerly served as the legal affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times and as a contributing columnist for the Washington Post. He clerked for Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and Anthony Kennedy and has taught at the UCLA School of Law and UC San Diego.
On March 10 of 2025, Harry Litman traveled back to Pittsburgh, his hometown, to participate in a Dick Thornburgh Forum program examining the future of federal law enforcement. He will return on February 10, 2026 to discuss what has occurred in the past eleven months. Among the issues to be considered are the role t of process and principle in the use of the pardon power; the firing of senior leaders in the Department of Justice and in the broader federal workforce; the deployment of the National Guard and the threatened deployment of active-duty units of the U.S. military in American cities; the law enforcement tactics being employed in the ongoing immigration crack-down; the use of administrative warrants to enter private homes; the exertion of pressure on law firms and the media; and the investigation and prosecution of political adversaries. Harry also will assess the record of the federal courts in responding to these challenges.
