Why Trump is afraid of international law

resident Donald Trump and his aides rarely go easy on their perceived enemies. But their attacks on the International Criminal Court — describing it as, among other things, filled with “lunatics” and pledging to destroy it — are hyperbolic enough that you have to wonder: Are they afraid the court will prosecute them? That’s the conclusion many former government officials and legal scholars are reaching. They point not only to Trump’s anti-ICC campaign but also his administration’s broader efforts to defund, abandon or otherwise damage a range of global mechanisms that enforce human rights laws, from treaties to United Nations organizations. Those moves come as the Trump administration is accused of a series of abuses, from killing Iranian schoolchildren to deporting asylum-seekers. At the same time, Trump is going to great lengths to protect his backers from domestic justice, including through his extensive use of pardons. “They’re doing everything they can to evade accountability as they attack the very institutions and advocates charged with holding rights abusers to account,” said Uzra Zeya, a former Biden administration official who is now president of Human Rights First. Spokespeople for the White House and the State Department deny such assertions. In statements to me, they reiterated complaints that the ICC threatens U.S. sovereignty and cast their campaign against it as squarely within Trump’s America First agenda. “All of the administration’s actions are lawful and in line with the agenda that President Trump was elected to implement,” stressed Anna Kelly, a spokesperson for the White House. But when it comes to the ICC in particular, Shakespeare might say the administration “doth protest too much.” By wildly overstating the court’s power, it is feeding the notion that it is genuinely worried. The ICC has almost — almost — no ability to prosecute U.S. citizens. The U.S. has never joined the court, which operates under severe jurisdictional limits. One sensitive ICC case, involving Americans in Afghanistan, was shelved years ago. And Trump has already repeatedly penalized court officials for investigating U.S. ally Israel. Yet, when I asked one Trump administration official whether they thought some of their colleagues could be prosecuted under international law, they replied: “Maybe.” The official also accused the court of being “insane” and “woke.” Bill Cortese, a GOP operative close to the White House, was more direct, telling me some administration officials are truly worried about prosecution. “There is a concern that, if Democrats come into power, that an unchecked ICC and other international institutions are going to unleash a wave of litigation against this administration and anyone associated with it,” Cortese said. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently accused the ICC of “waging a war against our country” he was specific about some aspects of the threat the administration sees. He said U.S. Marines, Border Patrol agents and others carrying out the daily work of defending the U.S. from its enemies could be targeted by the court. That is telling because under Trump, U.S. law enforcement and military officials have been accused of a notable number of human rights-related accusations that cross borders. U.S. military strikes targeting individuals on boats in the Western Hemisphere are a top example. The Trump administration claims it is taking out drug traffickers, but it has offered little evidence about the identities and backgrounds of the more than 200 people it has killed. Legal analysts told me that the boat strikes bear similarities to the alleged extrajudicial killings of thousands in the Philippines between 2016-2022 during then-President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs.” Duterte is now facing charges of crimes against humanity at the ICC, having been handed over by a succeeding Philippines government. Trump’s mass deportation policies have further sparked allegations of international law violatio