Does President Trump Know <br>What His State Department <br>Is Up To at Supreme Court?

Does President Trump know what his State Department is up to at the Supreme Court? It strikes us that his new secretary of state nominee might want to alert the president to get on top of the situation. That’s because in a case the Nine are deciding whether to hear, the State Department just signed a brief that puts the Trump administration on the side of the PLO — and against American victims of terror.We understand that Mike Pompeo is going to have a lot on his plate, what with Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, and the Iranian Ayatollahs. Why, then, would he want to be in America’s top court on the side of the PLO? Particularly because the position the State Department is taking would gut one of Congress’s signature anti-terror laws — one that may yet prove useful against both Iran and North Korea.This fight stems from a lawsuit launched in federal court in New York by American victims of a number of terror attacks in Israel. One of them, Mark Sokolow, was injured with his wife and two daughters in a bombing in Jerusalem. He is the named plaintiff in the case, in which the victims eventually gained a judgment of more than half a billion dollars against the PLO and the Palestinian Authority.Plaintiffs in the case used a law Congress passed after it became clear that President George H.W. Bush was unable — or unwilling — to launch a military response to the kind of terrorism taking place in the Middle East. In one terrorist attack after another, there had been no American counter-attacks against the terrorists or their sponsors or the states that helped enable them.So Congress decided to give to Americans standing to sue for damages against the terrorists or their sponsors, supporters or enablers outside of America. That is, it threw terrorists to the tort lawyers. It was just deserts, and in the case of Sokolow v. PLO, it looked like at least some of those responsible for some of the attacks would finally be held to some kind of account.In the summer of 2016, though, the appellate judges who ride the 2nd United States circuit overturned the case and threw out the award of damages. One reason may be — we speculate here — that President Obama’s deputy state secretary filed a declaration in the proceedings fretting that the ability of the Palestinian Authority to operate as a government might become “severely compromised.”Such fears were typical of President Obama and both his state secretaries, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. We hoped, though, that President Trump would have thought differently. As his administration has on scores of unrelated matters before our courts, from Obamacare to gun control to the regulation of business. It could have been a big help in getting Mr. Sokolow and his co-plaintiffs made whole at the Supreme Court.Particularly when the Supreme Court asked Mr. Trump’s solicitor general to file a brief. The position of the Obama administration had been shocking but not surprising. When Mr. Trump’s state department filed on the side of the PLO, it was both shocking and surprising. “I’m frankly stunned that this administration would back the PLO over American terror victims,” Theodore Olson tells us.Mr. Olson, himself a former solicitor general, is leading the effort to win a hearing at the Supreme Court. The House of Representatives and 23 senators have also filed briefs on the side of the Americans. Tort law isn’t the traditional way to fight terrorism. It can be, though, plenty fearsome and, right now, it’s all American victims of terror attacks in Israel have got. The Nine could make a decision on whether to hear the case any day now.Which brings us back to Mr. Pompeo. Surely the nominee for secretary of state grasps the issues in this case (he was not only first in his class at West Point but also graded onto the Harvard Law Review; that is, he is one of the most brilliant lawyers of his generation). He is unlikely to get confirmed as secretary of state in time to put the department on the right side of the case. No reason why he couldn’t could ask President Trump to do so — in the nick of time.

Does President Trump Know <br>What His State Department <br>Is Up To at Supreme Court?

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