The International Criminal Court (ICC) that sought an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday is the former workplace of Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting former President Donald Trump.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, requested warrants against Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders, accusing them of “war crimes” in the ongoing Gaza conflict.
The ICC failed to distinguish between the democratically-elected government of Israel, which adheres to international law and has a strong judiciary, and the terrorist organization responsible for starting the war and ignoring the law.
The U.S. has long opposed the ICC’s efforts to prosecute American soldiers and Israeli soldiers and officials for alleged crimes committed during battles against terrorists. Neither Israel nor the U.S. are parties to the ICC.
But Smith, who is pursuing Trump in two separate federal criminal cases — one about the Capitol riot, the other about the alleged mishandling of documents — worked at the ICC before being tapped by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
As the Agence France-Presse noted in 2023:
From 2008 to 2010 he served as an investigator for the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, where he was charged with supervising sensitive probes of foreign government officials over war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. His most high-profile work prior to the Trump probe has occurred at the special court on Kosovo in The Hague, where he led investigations and adjudications of war crimes committed in the Balkan republic during the 1990s wars that ripped apart Yugoslavia.
Smith failed to convict former presidential candidate John Edwards in 2012 for alleged campaign finance violations.
