Well, I did not see this verbal intercontinental ballistic missile fired at one of the most egregious and lawless organizations operating under the guise of 'international law' coming.
For a month now, I've been chronicling what I hope is the end-stage of the career of the International Criminal Court's (ICC) chief prosecutor, a vile, partisan witch hunter named Karim Khan.
In June, Khan was suspended for physically assaulting one of his staffers, who had credibly accused him of a pattern of rapidly escalating physical sexual harassment.
On Friday, word came that the United Nations investigation had concluded that the accuser's credibility had been established, that there had been no personal gain for her - in point of fact, her personal mental state and career suffered severely for the abuse, that Khan had retaliated against other court employees who had reported his harassment, and that Khan's actions were detrimental to the court and not in keeping with a position that demanded the highest level of integrity and moral character.
3/ That sexual relationship, the bureau found, was “extremely harmful” to the proper functioning of the court and was inconsistent with the statutory requirements of Mr. Khan’s role, which state that the chief prosecutor must be “a person of high moral character.”
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) July 9, 2026
They left the chief prosecutor spinning in the wind, and his fate will be decided at a July 24th meeting of the ICC member states, who will vote on whether he stays or goes.
When I closed the post, I wondered if any of Khan's trumped-up charges and biased indictments - like that of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - would be revisited, perhaps even thrown out/.
This morning, there was this cryptic but forceful denunciation of the ICC from our incredible Secretary of State, which, thanks to its complete dismissal of any legitimacy of said court in the most brutal AMERICAN terms ever, had bald eagles screaming in rapture across the country.
This, ladies and gentlemen, my fellow Americans, is how 'national sovereignty' is defined and how boundaries and limits are set... game, set, match.
BOOMITY
The International Criminal Court seeks to become the unaccountable arbiter of a new global law — empowered to prosecute and arrest our citizens at will and existentially threaten American sovereignty.
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) July 13, 2026
We will teach the ICC the full meaning of American resolve. pic.twitter.com/2egHK1jA98
My girl Sarah Rogers, Under Secretary of State and fearless defender of the freedom of speech against every effort of Europeans to throttle American inherent rights through their authoritarian censorship schemes and diktats, backed her boss up as only she can.
Important read. Multilateral mechanisms to deal with warlords and atrocities predated the ICC, and will continue to exist. But the United States has raised serious legal and sovereignty objections to the ICC since its formation. Now we’re acting on them. https://t.co/eG3Cykre6c
— Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers (@UnderSecPD) July 13, 2026
And Secretary Rubio had an accompanying transcript as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that laid out precisely what the objective is: the United States intends to take that illegitimate, power-usurping international cabal of unelected globalist authoritarians apart, brick by brick.
Why We’re Dismantling the International Criminal Court
America never agreed to a world tribunal that can override our own courts and the Constitution.
...The ICC was born at the turn of the century. At first, it was marketed as a narrow backstop to prosecute the gravest crimes. Now the ICC and its allies seek a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states—and to prosecute and arrest our citizens.
Americans never agreed to any of this. Both of our major political parties opposed the prospect of handing a distant global court the power to prosecute and jail our own citizens. President Clinton refused to submit the Rome Statute (the ICC’s founding charter) to the Senate for ratification due to his “concerns about significant flaws in the Treaty.” Two years later, a bipartisan Senate supermajority passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, authorizing the president “to use all means necessary”—including military force—to prevent the ICC from detaining or arresting Americans.
Americans found themselves in the crosshairs anyway: In 2020 the ICC launched an investigation into what chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of Gambia described as “war crimes by members of the United States armed forces” in Afghanistan, declaring that the U.S. government hadn’t prosecuted enough American soldiers to satisfy the court. In effect, Ms. Bensouda was anointing herself the final judge of U.S. military policy and the entire U.S. justice system.
The Afghanistan investigation was only the opening move in the assault against American self-government. The ICC is backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.
YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER US
...Perhaps more polite and compliant nations could make their peace with that arrangement. But this is America. Our forefathers fought a revolution against a foreign power “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.” Independence is our birthright. We don’t intend to trade it for rule by a self-appointed priesthood of “international law.”
The Trump administration will always protect American service members from this threat. The U.S. is launching a diplomatic campaign with a simple message—sovereign states over globalism. Those who benefit from American security must not stand idly by while those who provide that security are targeted. This is only the beginning. Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.
Even POTATUS, lost as he was in dreams of pudding, cannibals, and enamored with flights of fancy about his place on a world stage, told the ICC in no uncertain terms, 'You are not the boss of us.'
Those global states who are now waking up to what membership in the European Union has cost them - their standard of living, their very national identities - can only salivate and weep in frustration at the course the United States is setting. This clarion call for action with us in the vanguard of destroying the New World Order will send a chill down the spine of every government working feverishly to stifle the populist parties rising in their own countries.
The late Senator Lindsey Graham had a message for nations that would enforce ICC edicts on Americans.
“To any ally—Canada, Britain, Germany, France—if you try to help the ICC, we’re going to sanction you. We should crush your economy".
— USA ⁷⁷⁷ 🇸🇪🇪🇺 (@Q777us) July 13, 2026
Never threat us again 🇨🇦🇬🇧🇩🇪🇫🇷🇪🇺
God is not on your side in this. pic.twitter.com/IgutJololX
And this is a shot across the very vocal bow of the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) candidates who already hold office, and who have threatened to honor illegal ICC arrest warrants should a wanted ICC offender such as Bibi Netanyahu appear in their fair cities. Like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has threatened the Israeli PM with detainment.
Good luck with that, Junior.
This is AMERICA, not Uganda.
Engage screaming eagles.
Beege UPDATE: Speaking of screaming - found an email in my inbox from the folks at 'Democracy in the Arab World Now' (DAWN) doing exactly that.
Guess our SecState rattled some cages.
"In March, DAWN wrote to all states impacted by the regional war–including Iran, Israel, Lebanon and states in the Gulf–calling on them to accept ICC jurisdiction, so that all its citizens and all victims have a pathway to justice with no exceptions," said Omar Shakir, DAWN's Executive Director. "Rubio’s mischaracterization of our call to investigate all possible war crimes carried out in the war–focusing solely on the US’ actions in Iran–begs the question: is the Secretary of State worried because he knows US personnel committed war crimes in Iran?”
"When the world’s most powerful country aims to dismantle the world’s only permanent international court, it sends the message that the powerful are above the law. It is not the ICC that Rubio is dismantling brick by brick–but the rules-based international order that grew out of the ashes of World War II,” said Raed Jarrar, DAWN's Advocacy Director. "Rubio’s attack doesn't just underscore US hypocrisy, but undermines access to justice across the globe, from Ukraine to Sudan and could amount to obstruction of justice, a crime under the Rome Statute in and of itself."
"For the US Secretary of State to call out Americans advocating for justice underscores the high stakes in the Trump administration’s war on the International Criminal Court,” said Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, DAWN's Israel-Palestine Director. "We will be taking the Trump administration to court this week. Stay tuned."
Background
DAWN's March 5, 2026, letter asked the governments of Iran, Israel, Bahrain, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to file declarations accepting ICC jurisdiction over war crimes committed on their own territory since the war began on February 28. The letter stated that the laws of war apply equally to all parties, "whether they are the aggressor or the victim," and cited evidence of likely war crimes by different actors.
In February 2025, the Trump administration issued Executive Order 14203, which grants administration officials the power to impose sanctions on any foreigner who supports the ICC’s investigations targeting U.S. and Israeli nationals. Under Executive order 14203, the administration has sanctioned the ICC's chief prosecutor, ten of its judges, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, and three Palestinian human rights organizations.
Article 70 of the Rome Statute criminalizes impeding, intimidating, or corruptly influencing an ICC official to stop them from performing their duties, or retaliating against an official for having done so. Unlike the Statute's core crimes, which generally require a State Party nexus, the Court's own Rules of Procedure and Evidence extend Article 70 jurisdiction regardless of the accused's nationality, on the theory that the offense is against the Court's own integrity. As Rubio himself notes in his op-ed, the former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth has called for Trump administration officials to be prosecuted on this basis.
Talk about making Rubio's case FOR him.
As for worrying about what 'the Rome Statute' compels, the United States signed the agreement under Bill Clinton...
....Under the Rome Treaty, the International Criminal Court (ICC) will come into being with the ratification of 60 governments, and will have jurisdiction over the most heinous abuses that result from international conflict, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The Treaty requires that the ICC not supercede or interfere with functioning national judicial systems; that is, the ICC Prosecutor is authorized to take action against a suspect only if the country of nationality is unwilling or unable to investigate allegations of egregious crimes by their national, The U.S. delegation to the Rome Conference worked hard to achieve these limitation, which we believe are essential to the international credibility and success of the ICC.
In signing, however, we are not abandoning our concerns about significant flaws in the Treaty. In particular, we are concerned that when the Court comes into existence, it will not only exercise authority over personnel of states that have ratified the Treaty, but also claim jurisdiction over personnel of states that have not. With signature, however, we will be in signature, we will not.
...But more must be done. Court jurisdiction over U.S. personnel should come only with U.S. ratification of the Treaty. The United States should have the chance to observe and assess the functioning of the Court, over time, before choosing to become subject to its jurisdiction. Given these concerns, I will not, and do not recommend that my successor, successor, submit the Treaty to the Senate for advice and consent until our fundamental concerns are satisfied.
...but did not ratify the treaty.
In May of 2002, George Bush's administration sent a letter to the United Nations formally withdrawing the signature, affirming the US had no intention of ratifying the Statute and asking that the US be withdrawn from the names on the roster of those state parties who were.
...After the Rome Statute reached the requisite 60 ratifications in 2002, President George W. Bush's administration sent a note to the U.N. secretary-general on May 6, 2002. The note informed the secretary-general that the U.S. no longer intended to ratify the Rome Statute, and that it did not recognize any obligation toward the Rome Statute. In addition, the U.S. stated that its intention not to become a state party should be reflected in the U.N. depository's list. This is because signatories have an obligation not to undermine the object and purpose of a treaty according to Article 18 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, also sometimes referred to as the good faith obligations. According to American Non-Governmental Organizations Coalition for the International Criminal Court, the U.S. could engage with the Court by reactivating its signature to the Rome Statute by submitting a letter to the secretary-general.[11]
The statement on the ICC coalition's United States page is rather pissy in tone and reflects none of what the US asked for in terms of verbiage. It actually implies that we'll come to our senses eventually.
Although historically a strong supporter of international justice, the United States of America has only ever signed the Rome Statute and at one time indicated it did not intend to ratify the ICC founding treaty. The US has partially incorporated Rome Statute offenses into national laws, including war crimes and genocide provisions. The US holds one of five permanent seats in the United Nations Security Council.
Heh.
Beege MORE: Sammy is the accounting whiz bang who exposed Letitia James' interesting mortgage schemes.
@SamAntar trying to explain our constitution to @Ilhan is like trying to speak to paint on a wall. Zero comprehension or brain matter there. But…what do you expect from someone who hates America, is here illegally and marries their brother.
— Jwhw4547 (@jwhw4547) July 14, 2026
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