National Security

Lawyer For Terror Victims Not Amused After Justice Dept Lets Terrorists Off The Hook

REUTERS/Leah Millis

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Chris White Tech Reporter
Font Size:

An attorney representing American citizens injured during a 2004 terror attack in Israel claims the Trump administration is putting the well-being of the perpetrators before the victims of the attack.

Kent Yalowitz, an attorney representing several Americans hurt during a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, is blasting the Justice Department for pressing the Supreme Court not to review an appeals court decision to nix the case. The administration’s decision is incomprehensible given President Donald Trump campaigned during the 2016 election on protecting all Americans, Yalowitz told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“It’s stunning to me that the president campaigned on putting Americans first … now all of a sudden he’s putting terrorists first and Americans last,” Yalowitz said, referring to a U.S. appeals court decision in 2015 to throw out a verdict that would have allowed victims of Palestinian terrorism to collect a reversed multi-million dollar judgment.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestinian Authority (PA) were found guilty in 2015 of orchestrating a series of terror attacks in the early 2000s that resulted in the death of U.S. citizens, including Mark Sokolow, an attorney who was badly maimed in one of the bombings.

A U.S. district court initially ruled that the PA and the PLO were liable for $218.5 million in damages – the sum automatically tripled to $655.5 million under the 1992 Anti-Terrorism Act, a number roughly 15 percent of the PA’s annual budget. A Manhattan appeals court ruled in August of 2016 that the organizations were not responsible for paying the fine because the attacks occurred outside of the country.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco eventually filed in February the request document to the Supreme Court after several months of delay. The brief urged the justices to turn down the victims’ appeal claiming it didn’t “warrant this court’s intervention at this time.” Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel less than two months earlier in December. He also plans to move the United States Embassy there. Yalowitz was not impressed.

“It doesn’t make sense that a terrorist can be held liable for criminal matters but not punitively,” he said, referring to the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) of 1992, a law passed in response to the murder of a man in 1985 who was shot in the head and thrown overboard in his wheelchair when Palestinian Liberation Front guerillas took over a ship on a trip through the Mediterranean.

Yalowitz wants to know why the Trump administration worked to stymie his efforts to punish the PLO. “The only way to stop terrorism is to hold people accountable for their actions” he said. “But If you murder Americans anywhere in the world, then you must be taken to court. We know this because terrorists who kill Americans are routinely brought to justice.”

A bipartisan group of senators apparently agreed with Yalowitz. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa was one of 23 Senators who filed an amicus brief in April of 2017 backing the victims’ request that the Supreme Court take up the case.

“The ATA provides that perpetrators or supporters of international terrorism may be brought to justice in U.S. courts for injuring U.S. citizens regardless of where the injuries occurred,” Grassley wrote in a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions in October of 2017. Several of Grassley’s colleagues shared similar sentiments in the amicus brief last year.

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Orrin Hatch of Utah, and their Democratic colleagues, Chuck Schumer of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts signed the brief imploring the high court to review the case. The violence and mayhem meted out against Sokolow and others is what the ATA was designed to prevent, they noted in the brief.

The Trump administration, for its part, is not wavering from its decision. The president will continue to hold terrorists responsible for bombings that kill and hurt Americans, Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for the Office of Solicitor General, told TheDCNF in response to questions about why the Justice Department essentially sided with the PLO.

“The United States sympathizes deeply with the American families who, in 2004, sued the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization for acts of terrorism committed against their loved ones,” said Kupec, whose office was responsible for asking the Supreme Court not to relitigate the matter.

One attorney does not believe there is anything sinister afoot on the part of the Justice Department.

Stephen Vladek, a professor of law at the University of Texas who specializes in national security law, believes the government might simply be concerned about the risk of asking the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling on a due process issue.

“The solicitor general is reluctant to have SCOTUS jump in when a lower court makes a decision that doesn’t immediately harm the U.S.,” Vladek told TheDCNF. “It might be political, but it isn’t partisan –because the government usually holds the ‘if it’s not broke, then don’t fix it’ position on these matters.”

Follow Chris White on Facebook and Twitter. 

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel