Past Event: Jonathan Dienst and Asha Rangappa

In conversation: Jonathan Dienst and Asha Rangappa on assessing threats to national security and the nature of criminal and counterintelligence investigations

About the Speakers

Jonathan Dienst is chief justice contributor for NBC News and chief investigative reporter for WNBC-TV in New York. Dienst helps lead NBC News coverage of major breaking news ranging from terrorism to public corruption, white collar crime to mass shootings. His exclusive reporting has included: coverage of former President Trump’s alleged abuses; alleged wrongdoing by Sen. Robert Menendez, Sen. Robert Torricelli, former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik, former NY Governors Cuomo, Spitzer, Paterson, NY Senate leader Joe Bruno, NY Assembly Speaker Silver, former Westchester DA Jeanine Pirro, among other federal, state and local officials. For more than 20 years, he has helped spearhead the network’s coverage of significant terror-related incidents at home and abroad. Dienst also covers the NYPD and major crime stories from coast to coast – from school shootings in Newtown and Uvalde, to significant organized crime cases and to corruption on Wall Street.

Asha Rangappa is an Assistant Dean and Senior Lecturer at the Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs and a former Associate Dean at Yale Law School.

Prior to her current position, Asha served as a Special Agent in the New York Division of the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations.  Her work involved assessing threats to national security, conducting classified investigations on suspected foreign agents, and performing undercover work.  While in the FBI, Asha gained experience in intelligence tradecraft, electronic surveillance, interview and interrogation techniques, and firearms and the use of deadly force. At Yale, she teaches courses on national security law, Russian information warfare, and leadership and ethics. She the author of The Freedom Academy, an online Substack publication about disinformation and its impact on democracy.

Asha has published op-eds in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post, among others, and is a legal contributor for ABC News. She is an editor for Just Security, a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project.

Asha graduated cum laude from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study constitutional reform and U.S. drug policy in Bogotá, Colombia.  She received her law degree from Yale Law School where she was a Coker Fellow in constitutional law, and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Juan R. Torruella on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is admitted to the State Bar of New York (2003) and Connecticut (2003).