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A delegation of U.S. taxpayers and human rights attorneys has called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for their role in the genocide in Gaza.
On Wednesday, the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide (TAAG) delivered evidence against Trump and Rubio at the Hague, the headquarters of the ICC in the Netherlands, calling for their arrests for “aiding and abetting Israel in the commission of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Gaza.”
The organization announced its submission to the ICC at a press conference at the Hague on Wednesday.
Individuals and organizations working with the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide collected evidence for nearly a year, including sworn affidavits from doctors who worked in Gaza, firsthand eyewitness testimonies, and whistleblower accounts related to U.S. military, financial, and diplomatic support for Israel throughout the course of the three-year genocide in Gaza.
The submission to the Office of the Prosecutor includes testimony of medical professionals who treated victims of 2,000-pound bombs and victims of shootings at distribution sites of the U.S. and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — and notes that the Trump administration lifted a hold on 2,000-pound bombs, with Trump personally confirming the release of these bombs in early 2025. Rubio, the document states, also “approved or facilitated major arms transfers” including “large quantities of 2,000-pound bomb bodies or penetrator warheads,” while “waiving or compressing congressional review.” In addition, Rubio “participated in, funded, or defended” activities of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, even after Médecins Sans Frontières, the UN, USAID, and other organizations warned that the foundation was involved in “mass casualties, hunger, and aid-site danger.”
Seth Donnelly, co-founder of TAAG, introduced Wednesday’s press conference, explaining that the organization had attempted to utilize the U.S. court system to stop the government’s participation in the genocide — but that the U.S. court system “has proven incapable again, and again, and again, from addressing this crime,” forcing them to turn to the ICC.
“It is not enough to wait for elections, or to vote them out,” Donnelly said, of U.S. government officials including Trump and Rubio. “Those responsible for grave crimes against humanity, including genocide, must be prosecuted — even if they are the most powerful officials in the world.”
Lawyers working with TAAG spoke at the press conference, explaining that the evidence submitted demonstrates that Trump and Rubio “knowingly supplied, released, expedited, and protected the transfer of weapons to Israel after repeated warnings that those weapons were being used to cause mass civilian deaths, destruction, starvation, displacement, and to create conditions that made life virtually impossible in Gaza.”
Trump and Rubio’s attempts to dismantle the ICC were also addressed at the press conference. The Trump administration has “withdrawn from international human rights mechanisms and sought to undermine institutions” that aim to hold the powerful to account, argued Palestinian American human rights lawyer and TAAG member Huwaida Arraf.
Francesca Albanese, human rights expert and UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, also spoke at the press conference, saying, “This administration’s attack on the ICC, on UNRWA, and the United Nations as a whole reveal an ambition to entrench global hegemony and extinguish the possibility of justice, not just in Palestine — everywhere.”
Albanese decried Trump’s celebration of the so-called ceasefire, during which the Israeli military has killed more than a thousand Palestinians in Gaza, and his creation of the “Board of Peace,” which, she says, “revives imperial ambitions and colonial tones while securing conditions for Palestine’s continued erasure and Israel’s impunity.”
“Let us be clear: the genocide of the Palestinian people would not have been possible without the unwavering support of the United States,” Albanese said.
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