WASHINGTON — The State Department will impose “further sanctions” on the International Criminal Court in response to its attempts to charge American service members, according to a US official and an internal memo reviewed by The Post.
The official said that diplomatic posts were receiving warnings Thursday that “further ICC action” was imminent, while the memo cited longstanding grievances with the global organization established in 2002.
“The ICC seeks to become the unaccountable global arbiter – positioning itself above and beyond the nation state as a supranational judicial arm of a globalist bureaucracy empowered to persecute American servicemen and officials at will without authority and as an affront to our sovereignty,” the memo stated.
“It must be clear, once and for all, that the ICC can pose no threat to those who did not accept its authority,” the memo added.
“Building on the U.S. campaign to assemble a coalition of countries willing to reject the Court’s assault on State sovereignty, the United States has no choice but to impose further sanctions.”
The sanctions are expected to take effect soon, though the memo did not disclose in what form.
American diplomats were informed of the pending sanctions following Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Wednesday speech in Athens, Greece, in which he denounced attempts “to abolish the sovereignty of nations” and praising “the unapologetic pursuit of national power.”
In July, Rubio had bragged in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the US was “dismantling the ICC” and would be “[u]sing all the tools at our government’s disposal.”
Those tools include urging the 125 countries who signed the Rome Statute that created the ICC — whose number include Australia, Canada, the UK and most of Europe — to withdraw from the court, revoking ICC personnel’s visas, or ratcheting up sanctions.
In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month, President Trump said: “We will never allow US service members or anyone else to be investigated or given show trials by an anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction over us.”
“What an evil group of people,” the president added. “I call on all nations that are members of the ICC to officially resign from this rogue institution immediately.”
Trump previously signed an executive order in February 2025 sanctioning some ICC employees and their immediate family members for seeking the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Thursday’s memo appeared to reference this action when it noted: “The ICC has acted wildly outside of its purported mandate, unchecked by fundamental principles of international law, and apparently unconstrained by the Assembly of States Parties, as evidenced by its increasingly activist and inappropriate approach towards heads of State.”
At least sixteen other ICC investigations, arrests, detentions or prosecutions have since been undertaken “without consent of that person’s country of nationality,” the memo added.
