Trump Admin’s War on ICC Isn’t About US Sovereignty — It’s About Impunity

As the Trump administration carries out its campaign against the International Criminal Court, imposing wide-reaching sanctions on judges, prosecutors and groups who have accused Israel of war crimes in front of the international tribunal, we’re joined by veteran war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody. Brody says that the U.S. government’s rejection of the ICC’s jurisdiction is not about “American sovereignty,” as the Trump administration claims, but about “impunity,” for both U.S. allies, like Israel, and the U.S. itself. “Marco Rubio knows that bombing Iran without Security Council authorization constitutes aggression under the U.N. Charter,” says Brody. “This is an insurance policy against accountability for crimes that the Trump administration is committing in plain sight.”

Brody also responds to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s statements that his office may attempt to carry out the ICC arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu when the Israeli prime minister attends the United Nations General Assembly later this year, and to the recent announcement by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega that his country will no longer hold elections, further entrenching the onetime revolutionary’s authoritarian rule.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with a major escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against the International Criminal Court, the ICC. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new plans to systematically dismantle the ICC, quote, “brick by brick.” Last week, Rubio published an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, released a video attacking the Hague-based tribunal, accusing it of overreach.

SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: But as we speak, the ICC and its friends are waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles, but with statutes, compacts and the force of so-called international law. When the ICC was born 24 years ago, they told us that it was merely a narrow backstop, a global court that would step in to prosecute only the gravest offenses, things like genocide and war crimes, and only when a nation’s courts were unable to prosecute them on their own. But the truth is, it was something far more radical and extreme. It was a global tribunal staffed by unelected globalist bureaucrats who claim their power is almost unlimited.

The danger of this global court has only continued to grow. Today, it threatens every aspect of our political and legal system — Border Patrol agents removing violent criminals from our country, American Marines risking their lives to defend our homeland, prosecutors working to dismantle terrorist plots to attack and kill Americans. If we stand idle, all of them would be at the mercy of foreign judges thousands of miles away, facing the constant risk of prosecution and even imprisonment for the so-called crime of defending their own country.

AMY GOODMAN: In his Wall Street Journal piece, Rubio singled out human rights organizations, including Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, for supporting international accountability efforts. Rubio’s attacks came as DAWN has filed a major lawsuit in U.S. federal court challenging the Trump administration’s sanctions targeting the International Criminal Court. The lawsuit argues the sanctions, quote, “violate Americans’ constitutional right to engage in Palestine-related human rights advocacy,” unquote.

Rubio’s attack on the ICC comes two years after the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced in 2024 he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as three Hamas leaders, over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Since then, Khan has been accused of sexual misconduct by a female aide. On Friday, the ICC’s 125 member states are scheduled to hold a special session at the United Nations to vote on Khan’s future.

Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani reiterated Monday he’s still looking into arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York for the U.N. General Assembly in September.

MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI: When it comes to Benjamin Netanyahu, we’re speaking about someone who’s the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant. And he’s the subject of this arrest warrant for alleged crimes against humanity, for war crimes, and he’s the architect of the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza as Israel’s prime minister. These are not facts of my personal assessment; they are facts of public record. And I believe that when we — when someone is charged with an International Criminal Court warrant, it’s something that should be taken seriously, whether it’s Benjamin Netanyahu or it’s Vladimir Putin or whomever else. What I’ve also made clear is that my administration will follow all applicable local laws.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Toulouse, France, where we’re joined by Reed Brody, war crimes prosecutor, a member of the International Commission of Jurists and author of To Catch a Dictator: The Pursuit and Trial of Hissène Habré. He’s also on the board of DAWN.

Reed Brody, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you respond to the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio writing in The Wall Street Journal he wants to dismantle the International Criminal Court “brick by brick”?

REED BRODY: Sure. Thank you, Amy, again.

Look, this is not a defense of American sovereignty against a runaway court. This is an insurance policy against accountability for crimes that the Trump administration is committing in plain sight. Look, Marco Rubio knows that bombing Iran without Security Council authorization constitutes aggression under the U.N. Charter, that blowing up boats in the Caribbean and killing their occupants without trial constitutes murder, that rendering migrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison, where they were tortured, can create criminal liability. And in fact, sanctioning judges and prosecutors for doing their job is itself a crime under the — crime against the administration of justice under the court statute. So, this isn’t about American sovereignty; it’s about impunity.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Reed, how, in your estimation, has the Trump administration approached international law, especially in his second — in Trump’s second term?

REED BRODY: You know, I mean, obviously, American adherence to international law has always been selective and often hypocritical. I mean, think about the invasion of Iraq, the Bush torture program. And, you know, Washington has traditionally championed war crimes tribunals as long as they prosecuted other people, right? The defeated, the outcast, the enemy of the West. But, you know, even at its most hypocritical, the United States paid tribute to the rules. It claimed its wars were legal. It wrote memos to argue that torture wasn’t torture. Hypocrisy, as they say, is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

But Trump has even stopped, you know, the pretense. You know, he bombs Iran and hardly bothers with the legal justification. He blows up boats and posts the videos. The secretary of state speaks about “so-called international law,” you know, and vows to dismantle the world’s criminal court “brick by brick.” So, I mean, earlier presidents violated the rules while pretending to honor them, and Trump, I think, is just, you know, trying to destroy the rules.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what about Marco Rubio’s contention that the International Criminal Court has far exceeded its original mandate? What’s your response to that?

REED BRODY: You know, when you listen to Marco Rubio, you hear a court waging war with statutes. You know, that tells you everything. I mean, to this administration, law itself is the enemy. And I think if we think about it, they are trying to do abroad what they’re doing at home, right? Trample on international law like they’re trampling on domestic law, while they undermine all of the institutions that could get in their way — the courts and the ICC, the journalists, the civil society organizations. So, it’s very much, I think, in keeping with what the administration is doing in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Reed, can you talk about the bombing of desalination plants, their significance? And talk, overall, about people around the world looking at what’s happening to and whether to take human rights crimes allegation seriously.

REED BRODY: You know, I mean, the cornerstone principle of the laws of war is that you can only attack military targets, right? Never civilians, never civilian objects. And the Geneva Conventions, in particular, protect objects that are indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, and they specifically name in the Geneva Conventions drinking water installations. So, you know, deliberately, or even recklessly, attacking a population’s water supply would be a war crime, full stop.

And, you know, in this case, we have Trump publicly threatening. He said earlier, you know, that they would hit possibly all desalination plants. So, when a president announces his intention to destroy the infrastructure that civilians depend on for to survive, and then does it, you know, that looks like the deliberate targeting of a civilian population’s lifeline. Now, President Trump and the military commanders who carry out these orders, you know, could one day face prosecution for these things.

I mean, let’s remember that the ICC has already charged Russian generals for exactly this, attacking the infrastructure in Ukraine, the power grids. And at DAWN, we’ve called on Iran and the Gulf states to give the ICC jurisdiction over crimes committed on their territories. And in fact, that is specifically what Rubio singled us out for.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Reed, I wanted to ask you about New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s raising the possibility of seeking to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu during when he comes to New York for the General Assembly. Is that even possible for a local mayor or local police force to enforce an international warrant like this?

REED BRODY: Well, I think there are a lot of complex legal issues involved, including his potential immunity as a sitting prime minister, the United Nations agreement with the United States for — which requires the United States to let people, you know, speak, to come to the United Nations.

So, but, you know, I think it’s really important that he’s saying this. I mean, Netanyahu is under an ICC arrest warrant for crimes against humanity. The United States may be obliged to let Netanyahu speak at the U.N., but it’s not obliged to roll out the red carpet. It’s not obliged to invite him to, you know, address Congress. I mean, the mayor is saying what the president should be saying, which is that a man wanted for crimes against humanity is not an honored guest.

And, you know, let’s not overlook the bigger issue, which is American complicity in these very crimes. As DAWN alleged last year in a filing with the court, before the U.S. sanctions blocked DAWN from further cooperating with the court, the bombs that Israel used to destroy schools and hospitals and homes in Gaza were American bombs. Israel’s campaign of murder and persecution has been carried out with American political, financial, diplomatic support. So, you know, to me, the real scandal isn’t that the mayor of New York is asking whether he can arrest Netanyahu. It’s that the president of the United States is protecting Netanyahu and sanctioning the judges who are trying — you know, who have indicted him.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain how they’ve been sanctioned, Reed, how the ICC judges have been sanctioned, and the lawsuit brought by the organization you’re on the board of, DAWN, Democracy for the Arab World Now.

REED BRODY: So, that’s right. I mean, you know, I mean, I have — I mean, Trump’s executive order, first of all, authorizes a list — to sanction a list of people. And that list of people has now grown. It started with the ICC prosecutor. It then was expanded to the two deputy prosecutors, and now eight judges of the ICC, every judge who has ruled on the Israel issue or previously, many years back, on potential war crimes in Afghanistan. And, you know, these sanctions are crippling the court. And in the case of the individual judges and prosecutors, it means not only they can’t come to the United States, they can’t have bank accounts, they can’t use credit cards, they can’t do a lot of the things that we do. And now I think this announcement by — about dismantling the court brick by brick suggests that those sanctions will be expanded.

But in terms of DAWN and — you know, here’s the risk in concrete terms. I mean, Trump’s executive order makes it a federal offense to provide a service — “service” — to anyone who has been sanctioned. And that includes, as I said, the judges, the prosecutors. It also includes the three leading Palestinian human rights organizations, like our friend Raji Sourani’s group, you know, who are documenting the destruction of Gaza and sharing that evidence with the court. It includes the U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese. So, if an American lawyer or a group like DAWN shares evidence of war crimes with the ICC or collaborates with the Palestinian human rights groups, we risk federal prosecution. And DAWN asked the Treasury Department three times, in writing, to confirm that our human rights work is lawful, and Treasury never answered. So, DAWN has had to censor itself, not to provide submissions to the court, to suspend work with the Palestinian groups. And that’s the point of the sanctions, not just to punish The Hague, but, you know, to drive Americans into silence.

So, we’ve brought this lawsuit, which makes two basic arguments. One is it’s the First Amendment. Under the First Amendment, the government cannot punish Americans for what they say, including what they say to a court, or for whom we associate with in human rights work. And second, that the president has exceeded his own authority in — when Congress gave presidents sanctioning authority, it expressly barred them from restricting personal communications and the exchange of information.

And we’re not the only people who brought lawsuits. I mean, three of the court’s own judges have sued in New York. Two law professors brought their own challenge. And a federal judge in Manhattan permanently barred the government from enforcing the sanctions against their work, on First Amendment grounds. Another federal judge in Maine blocked enforcement against two human rights activists on the same grounds. So, so far, every federal judge that has looked at the issue has ruled that the sanctions go too far.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Reed, in Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega has declared his nation will no longer hold elections. He made the announcement Sunday in Managua, commemorating the 1979 Sandinista Revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. This is what he said.

PRESIDENT DANIEL ORTEGA: [translated] There won’t be ⁠⁠any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power. … The days when parties backed by the Yankees and the Somocistas would return to power are over. Never again.

AMY GOODMAN: It was Ortega’s first public appearance in two months. In 2021, he secured a fourth term as president following a monthslong crackdown on dissent, during which dozens of opposition figures, including seven presidential hopefuls, were arrested. A U.N. report earlier this year found Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo, whom he named co-president, eliminated all checks and balances on their power to build an authoritarian state in Nicaragua. You, Reed Brody, are a war crimes prosecutor and are one of the expert members of the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua that released that report. Your final comment in this last minute?

REED BRODY: Well, we’ve been watching, unfortunately, Nicaragua’s descent into dictatorship since 2018, when the government fired on massive peaceful protests and killed some 350 people. In the last elections in 2021, virtually all of the candidates were arrested and have since been exiled and stripped of their citizenship. All independent media and NGOs have been shut down and exiled. There are no independent political parties. Last year, the constitution was amended to formally do away with the separation of powers and put all power in the hands of the two co-presidents, Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo.

So, this really, it’s just — you know, it’s just dropping the other shoe. It’s just making — you know, just ending all the pretense that there are any rights in Nicaragua, that there is any possibility of a fair election. And this is really — as you know, Amy, I go back in Nicaragua for 40 years and to the time of the revolution, and, you know, Daniel Ortega, who was part of a group that rose up to fight off a family dictatorship, has now created a family dictatorship. And it’s a real tragedy for the people of Nicaragua.

AMY GOODMAN: Reed Brody, war crimes prosecutor, member of the International Commission of Jurists, author of To Catch a Dictator: The Pursuit and Trial of Hissène Habré. Reed, happy birthday!

REED BRODY: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Coming up, we look at the World Cup with former soccer player Jules Boykoff. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Crumb Clean” by The Corner Laughers.