The White House indicated Monday that it would veto a bipartisan bill giving Americans the right to sue foreign governments for terrorism, specifically Saudi Arabia for its role in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Josh Earnest, the president’s top spokesman, said the measure would unravel countries’ sovereign immunity, an important principle of international law that could pose larger legal consequences for individual Americans if that immunity is lost.
If other countries were to adopt a similar law, it could put the United States and “its taxpayers” at risk, he said.
“Given the long list of concerns that I’ve expressed about rolling back this core principle,” Earnest said it would be “difficult to imagine” the president signing the bill.
Earnest noted as an example that the U.S. engages with a broad variety of humanitarian relief efforts around the world, and if a citizen of another country was unsatisfied with how the relief efforts were carried out, they could sue Americans involved.
“If someone decided they were unhappy with the way those humanitarian relief efforts were carried out, you can imagine someone in a faraway country would file a lawsuit against the United States for our humanitarian relief effort,” he said. “This could potentially put the United States and our taxpayers at risk, it could also put U.S. service members who are often involved in those humanitarian efforts at risk as well.”
Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., teamed up to write the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. The measure, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year, would take away immunity from foreign governments in cases “arising from a terrorist attack that kills an American on American soil.”
Obama is facing increased pressure from the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks as he prepares to leave Tuesday for a trip to Saudi Arabia.
Over the past week, those families have stepped up their pressure on the Obama administration to unclassify a section of a congressional report that may describe links between Saudi Arabia and the Sept. 11 attacks. Many of the families argue that Riyadh played a role in the attacks, considering that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, and they want access to some 28 secret pages of the 9/11 Commission report that detail the hijackers sources of money and funding.
The U.S. government has kept those pages classified for more than a decade.
Earnest on Monday referred questions about whether the administration would declassify that section to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Saudi Arabia has threatened to sell roughly $750 billion in U.S. assets if the Cornyn-Schumer bill passes and becomes law.
