ICC, Where Trump Prosecutor Jack Smith Worked, Now Targets Netanyahu

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.

As Breitbart News reported, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, requested warrants against Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas terrorist leaders, accusing all 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 that started the war and flouts the law.

The U.S. has long opposed the ICC’s efforts to prosecute American soldiers, and Israeli soldiers and officials, over supposed 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, one 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.

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 Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” 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.