Netanyahu and Lindsey Graham conspired to use sex claims against Khan to delay warrants
US Senator Lindsey Graham and Benjamin Netanyahu conspired to use sexual misconduct allegations against the International Criminal Court's (ICC) chief prosecutor to try and delay the court's arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, it has emerged.
The revelation raises further questions about an intensifying intimidation campaign, documented by Middle East Eye last year, which targeted Karim Khan and the ICC over his office's efforts to bring Gaza war crimes prosecutions against Israeli ministers.
It comes following Graham's death earlier this month - and after Khan was removed from his role as ICC chief prosecutor last Friday in a vote by the court's member states.
The conversation was reported this week by the New York Times and was in recordings taken by British filmmaker Alex Holder, who followed Graham around for three years for a documentary on his relationship with US President Donald Trump and Netanyahu.
The phone call took place on 29 October 2024, just weeks before ICC judges announced they were issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister Yoav Gallant.
Khan had applied for the warrants in May 2024.
Netanyahu noted to Graham that the ICC judges would be "making the decision very soon".
The Israeli prime minister then said Khan faced allegations of sexual misconduct. He told Graham "the great cloud that it shed" could help delay the arrest warrant for himself.
"It is possible to have to appeal to the court to say, ‘OK, we want to review this before you do anything, before you issue an arrest warrant. There has to be a review about this entire process,'" he said.
Netanyahu said "this cloud or this stain has to be removed".
He added: "And I suggest that you send a letter, with, maybe some other senators." Graham said he would try to have Democrats sign it too.
'I should get tons of shekels'
In a second call later that day, Graham said "we got them both", apparently referring to two Democrat senators, Richard Blumenthal and Ben Cardin. He added: "So send me over whatever you want to say."
Graham joked to Netanyahu that the prime minister should "pay me for all this. I should get tons of shekels". He added it would take "more than dinner" and asked for Netanyahu "to call Blumenthal and Cardin and thank them for being fair-minded on this, and also thank them for trying to help with Saudi-Israel normalisation".
The letter was sent on 1 November and included Blumenthal and Cardin as signatories. But it did not delay the ICC judges in issuing warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as three Hamas officials, on 21 November.
The two senators did not reply to the New York Times's requests for comment.
Netanyahu and other Israeli ministers have previously claimed that Khan used the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant to cover up his alleged sexual misdemeanours.
But as an MEE investigation last year revealed, Khan had informed the US of his intention to apply for the warrants weeks before he was aware of the allegations.
MEE has previously reported that Graham played a significant role in attempting to apply pressure on Khan over his Israel investigation.
On 1 May 2024, before applying for the warrants, Khan had a conference call with senior ICC officials, Graham and a bipartisan group of senators.
According to material reviewed by MEE, Graham told Khan that if he proceeded with the warrants "you may as well shoot the hostages yourself" and "we will sanction you".
He added that the ICC was "made for Africa and thugs like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, not democracies like Israel".
British barrister Andrew Cayley, who oversaw the ICC’s Palestine investigation, told the Observer newspaper last year that Graham was "screaming at us".
In a later statement, in which he claimed that the by-then public misconduct allegations against Khan had cast a moral cloud over his application for Israeli arrest warrants, Graham said the senators had urged Khan "to respect the principle of complementarity and to engage in good faith with Israeli officials before making any decision as to how to move forward against the State of Israel".
Controversy over Khan's removal
Eighty-two of the court's 125 member states voted in a secret ballot last Friday to dismiss Khan as prosecutor over sexual misconduct claims at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
In March, Khan, who has denied all allegations, was cleared of all wrongdoing by a panel of judges appointed by the ICC's governing body, the Assembly of State Parties (ASP) bureau, to review a UN investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against him.
The judges concluded unanimously that the UN investigators' findings "do not establish misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant framework".
But a group of disproportionately western and European member states of the ASP bureau voted to disregard the judges and to come up with their own conclusion on the case based on the UN report.
The bureau then concluded last month that Khan "engaged in a sexual relationship" with the complainant, arguing that "in the context of that power imbalance a sexual relationship could never be appropriate".
'Khan's removal lines up neatly with the fight to neutralise Netanyahu's arrest warrant'
- Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories
Khan has denied that any sexual relationship had taken place, while the complainant’s account - the focus of the UN investigation - had centred on allegations of non-consensual conduct.
The vote on Friday followed an 18-month disciplinary process against Khan that Palestinian rights groups, former judges and the prosecutor's lawyers have described as politicised.
Francesca Albanese, the UN's special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, wrote last Saturday on X that "Khan's removal lines up neatly with the fight to neutralise Netanyahu's arrest warrant. Coincidence is a luxury intl law can no longer afford".
Welcoming the decision, Netanyahu posted that he has spoken to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about giving the ICC the coup de grace.
"He once again reaffirmed America’s determination to act forcefully against this institution - an institution that undermines justice, attacks democratic and sovereign nations, and seeks to subordinate their security to the decisions of unaccountable and corrupt officials in The Hague," Netanyahu wrote.
Israeli media reported, citing anonymous Israeli officials, that a task force set up by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar worked to lobby ICC member states to vote against Khan.
Khan, his two deputies and a number of judges were subjected to US sanctions last year.
Rubio said earlier this month that Washington would "dismantle the ICC - brick by brick, if necessary".