Reversing a Biden administration position, President Trump’s Justice Department argued that a lawsuit could proceed in Manhattan that accuses a United Nations agency of providing more than $1 billion that helped to enable Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The lawsuit says that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency allowed Hamas to siphon off the organization’s funds to help build a terrorist infrastructure that included tunneling equipment and weapons that supported the attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and roughly 250 were taken hostage.
The Biden administration argued last year that UNRWA could not be sued because it was part of the United Nations, which enjoys immunity from such lawsuits.
But the Justice Department told a federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday that neither UNRWA nor the agency officials named in the lawsuit were entitled to immunity.
“The complaint in this case alleges atrocious conduct on the part of UNRWA and its officers,” the department wrote in a letter to Judge Analisa Torres of Federal District Court, adding, “The government believes they must answer these allegations in American courts.”
“The prior administration’s view that they do not was wrong,” the department said.
The letter was submitted by Yaakov M. Roth, a senior Justice Department official, and Jay Clayton, the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
