Mike Pompeo: Biden Should Restore Trump’s Sanctions on the ICC

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that President Joe Biden should restore President Donald Trump’s 2020 sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), which Biden reversed soon after taking office, in April 2021.

As Breitbart News reported, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced Monday that he intended to charge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant with war crimes over their response to Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Khan also said that he would charge three Hamas leaders, but the idea of charging the democratically-elected leader of a U.S. ally, responding to unprovoked terror, caused outrage in Israel and the U.S.

As Breitbart News also noted, Biden had revoked Trump’s sanctions on the ICC and its officials, which sought to prevent the ICC from investigating U.S. soldiers and the soldiers of allied countries, including Israel. Neither the U.S. nor Israel are parties to the Rome Statute, which establishes the authority and jurisdiction of the ICC. Still, Biden revoked the sanctions, acknowledging the ICC’s anti-Israel and anti-American bias but promising to reform it.

President Biden expressed outrage at the ICC warrants Monday, but did not acknowledge his role in revoking Trump’s sanctions. Biden has had to revert to other old Trump policies, such as listing the Houthis as terrorists.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.