WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday will sign an executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court, accusing the body of improperly targeting the United States and Israel, according to a copy of a fact sheet supporting the order obtained by NBC News.
The order will include both financial sanctions and visa restrictions against unspecified ICC officials and their family members found to have assisted in ICC investigations of U.S. citizens or allies.
Last November, the ICC sparked bipartisan backlash in Washington by issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and several Hamas leaders simultaneously. The Trump administration order claims this created a “shameful moral equivalency.”
The court said there was reason to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant used “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting humanitarian aid and intentionally targeting civilians in Israel’s campaign in Gaza — charges Israeli officials dismissed as false and antisemitic.
The expected signing of this order this afternoon appears timed to the Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, which included an Oval Office meeting Tuesday.
In his first term, Trump argued that the ICC has “no jurisdiction, no legitimacy and no authority” in the U.S., and neither the U.S. nor Israel are parties to the so-called Rome Statute, which established the court.
“The ICC was designed to be a court of last resort,” the fact sheet on the executive order reads. “Both the United States and Israel maintain robust judiciary systems and should never be subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC.”
Earlier this year, the House passed a bill to sanction the ICC that was later blocked by Democrats the Senate.
Neither Israel nor the U.S. recognizes the jurisdiction of the ICC, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands, and has no police to enforce its warrants. Under the Rome statute that created it, signatories are obliged to carry out arrest warrants, no matter the rank of the accused. But most governments also abide by the international legal principle that heads of state have legal immunity from other courts.
