Should an unaccountable United Nations court, created by a treaty to which the United States is not a signatory, and that the Senate has not ratified, be allowed to investigate, try and imprison American citizens?
Unfortunately, this is no longer a theoretical question. In November, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Fatou Bensouda, announced she was seeking a formal investigation into alleged war crimes committed by U.S. military forces and CIA officers in Afghanistan. Bensouda — a Gambian lawyer who is answerable to no government or institution — claims unbridled power to investigate, charge and prosecute American citizens, no matter what the U.S. government says. A pretrial chamber of the court, made up of judges from Hungary, France and Benin, was tasked with considering her request.
Who gave these foreign magistrates the right to try U.S. citizens, whose government never assented to the court’s jurisdiction through our own democratic institutions? No one. And, yet, they are preparing to exercise this supranational power for the first time.
That will not happen if the Trump administration has anything to say about it. In a speech last week to the Federalist Society, national security adviser John Bolton delivered a stark warning to the ICC: “If the court comes after us … this administration will fight back to protect American constitutionalism, our sovereignty, and our citizens. No committee of foreign nations will tell us how to govern ourselves and defend our freedom.” Should the court act against U.S. citizens, Bolton said, the United States will bar ICC judges and prosecutors from entering the country, sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system and prosecute them in the American criminal-justice system.
