Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday that he is launching a campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court, calling it “an intolerable threat to U.S. sovereignty.” File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday that he is launching a campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court, calling it “an intolerable threat to U.S. sovereignty.”
Rubio said the campaign will be a “whole-of-government response to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate.” Efforts that the secretary of state is considering include diplomatic calls, increasing the scrutiny of nations that “refuse to reject the ICC’s false authority,” and visa revocations and travel bans for ICC personnel.
In a video message accompanying the State Department’s press release, Rubio said of U.S. sovereignty, “powerful people in far away places want to take that away from us.”
“They believe that they should be in charge of your laws, your country, your life, and they don’t care whether or not you agree,” Rubio said. “Halfway across the world there’s an institution that calls itself the International Criminal Court. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t. But chances are you don’t know the names of its judges, its prosecutors or its president. And you shouldn’t have to. But as we speak, the ICC and its friends are waging a war against our country.”
Last month, three of the ICC’s judges filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in New York, alleging that the administration has placed unlawful sanctions on the organization.
The United States has not signed the Rome Statute, an international treaty that established the ICC in 1998. However, Democratic administrations have cooperated with the court while Republican administrations have been less receptive.
The Trump administration has pushed back on the ICC’s investigation into Israel’s actions in Gaza while the George W. Bush administration pushed back on the court attempting to investigate U.S. soldiers for their conduct in Afghanistan.
This week in Washington
Olympic canoeist David Hearn departs the Moultrie Courthouse after pleading not guilty to damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Thursday. Hearn was indicted on July 2 on one count of destruction of property of more than $1,000 for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool, carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison if convicted. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
