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.