About the only thing we can be fairly certain of is that Karim Khan's replacement will drop the ICC warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.* And that will be telling, since it was both Israel and US who have been pushing to get Khan removed ever since his warrant for Netanyahu, and Marco Rubio even said beforehand that the administration had was taking actions to get him removed.
(*And not Putin.)
Here's the most definitive report I've been able to find on the actual acts Khan is accused of actually doing (you have to really dig to find this):
A later report from 2026 reports Khan was cleared by a 3 judge panel of any relevant misconduct:
This often gets referred to elsewhere as rape (I don't think it rises to that) or sexual harassment (it could qualify for that, but I generally question the concept and the standard ultimately applied by IOS which is the appearance of impropriety which is a terrible slippery slope, along with the concept imbalance of power which generally ignores the often superior powers that women have).
1. He is alleged to have asked her to lie with her on a hotel bed (she did so) and ultimately he "touched her sexually" (elsewhere it is clarified: her breasts).
2. He is alleged to have asked her to go on vacations with her (I'd dismiss this as completely unimportant). She apparently did not, in this case she would have had to say yes for it to happen. It was reported she was often reluctant to say no because of the imbalance of power.
3. He is alleged to have put his hand in her pocket (I would say, this is no big deal, though perhaps not completely unimportant, and we don't know the precise context).
4. He knocked on her door for 10 minutes at 3 am wanting to talk with her. (It should be remembered that she was a very close aide who made many work related trips with him). I would call this completely unimportant to the charges.
Two items that are borderline seamy, and two that are completely unimportant. Of which we know nothing about the antecedents--things she may have said or done. We more or less know the context: she was his closest aide on important trips.
And we are not at all talking about what would unequivocally be regarded as sexual acts.
IOW, it is not the Khan stopped doing things when he was told not to (ie no means no). It is rather that he did not first obtain affirmative permission for doing a couple of things that may have appeared improper and two others that were not unreasonable.
And for these, the warrants against the greatest criminal of our era will be dropped. And meanwhile, the vast documented rapes by Epstein clients go uninvestigated and the vast documented rapes in Israeli prisons are accepted, demanded and even celebrated by Israelis. The Gaza genocide and pogroms in the West Bank continue.
Now Khan could NOT be described as any kind of leftist. He was a Tory from the UK who only issued the warrant against Netanyahu (and failed to do so for many others who might have qualified for conducting genocide) under a lot of pressure, possibly even including the pressure from the initial secret inquiry into his alleged sexual harassment which had already started. He had previously and more quickly issued a warrant for Putin (which in my mind is specious).
Also, FWIW, Khan is a married Muslim (married to a UN civil rights investigator) with two daughters. And himself a judge of considerable stature.
The aide who was allegedly harassed did not make these things public (which was when they really took off). She refrained from doing so possibly because she was in favor of the warrants against Netanyahu. It was two of her "friends" who heard about the matter who made it public.
This raises many possible ideas as to the context and antecedents of the alleged sexual harassment.
Nowhere in the public discussion are the things she may have done prior to the alleged acts in question.
Journalist Patrick Lawrence calls this affair (leading to the likely dropping of warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant) a "Descent into Lawlessness"
https://thefloutist.substack.com/p/further-into-lawlessness
Ultimately Khan was sacked not by a judicial process but by a political one, by the Assembly of States Parties, which was no doubt (see Rubio's comment) heavily lobbied, bribed, and or coerced by the US (which has observer status) into making the vote against Khan. After actual judges had investigated the affair and concluded there was no there there.
Commentator Craig Murray has concerns about the affair but keeps hedging that we don't know the facts. The problem with this copout is that we do know the allegations and even they are pretty weak tea.
Murray's article may be far more interesting in his defense of Delcy Rodriguez who is now often demonized on the left for selling out. He also uniquely points out that Venezuela is actually getting the money from oil sales, less a relatively small US fee, and of course with no control over where the oil is going, which is a violation of sovereignty. He has been to Venezuela and talked to top officials. Ironically, according to Murray, Venezuela is getting the money from oil sales far more quickly than when China was handling the process.
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