Yeah.

And, um, the people that I worked with at the court, uh, they are, they're not political.

Um, the court is, lives in a political world, and it's influenced by politics.

It is, it is sometimes constrained by politics, but it is not itself political.

The people there are Serious, committed, hardworking, often to the point of breaking.

You know, they- there are many people who have to leave because they're, they're, they're burned out, they're worn out.

Um, it is, it has very, very heavy on process, um, especially at the International Criminal Court.

Mm

Yeah.

Twenty-one? Twenty-one states.

Uh, it i- it's a body that's, um, uh, created in the Rome Statute, uh, and it basically, it's, it's 21 states that gets elected for a period of, I think it's two years.

Uh, and they essentially manage the Assembly of States Parties, which is 125 states.

Um, and the Bureau then received all this information, and they then m- pass their own judgment, uh, on the report and on the advice given by the three judges.

Uh, and they, by a- apparently, this has not been made public, but it's been reported that by a two-thirds majority, they concluded that Mr. Khan had conduct... had engaged in serious misconduct as defined under Article 46 of the statute, and then referred it to the Assembly of States Parties for a vote, which is what occurred last Friday.

So those are the stages of the process.

So I just wanted, um, either of you or both of you to address, is that correct in your estimation that the outcome or the ultimate outcome, the A- uh, ASP, the Assembly of State Parties', uh, decisive decision to remove Mr. Khan, let's put it this way, would not have occurred, uh, without the factor that I've just described of, um, US government and Israeli government, uh, pressure?

Can you give us just an, an example of what those changes look like?

Yeah, I'll give you two examples.

So one example is that historically, at least since the, very firmly since the 1970s but even preceding that, there's been a clear separation between the White House and the Justice Department.

So there's been care that the...

Al- although the Justice Department is within the executive branch, the president selects the attorney general who, who's then confirmed by the Senate, there has been a norm of independence for the Department of Justice, uh, so that, for example, the president doesn't instruct the attorney general who to prosecute, who not to prosecute.

That norm has essentially been torn down because the president has ordered the department to investigate certain people and has also rewarded friends and supporters with either pardons or dropping their cases.

So there's been direct control of the Department of Justice from the White House on a number of big cases.

I mean, it feels like that is working now, right? It is shutting people down.