In less than four months since returning to the Oval Office, President Donald Trump has already caused an unprecedented amount of chaos. He has signed off more executive orders than any other president, sent global markets spiralling with his tariffs and has made a seemingly pointed effort to abandon diversity and inclusion protocols in government.

His latest sanctions, however, could see a group of top UK human rights lawyers denied entry to the US because of their work with the International Criminal Court in relation to Israel’s attacks on Gaza – including Amal Clooney. The sanctions would be in retaliation for the barristers advising the ICC in a war crimes case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Last week, the Financial Times reported that the UK Foreign Office has cautioned several high-level barristers about Trump’s potential sanctions. They would reportedly come under Trump’s ‘Executive Order 14203’, which named British lawyer and ICC prosecutor Karim Khan in its annex. He is the first barrister to face US sanctions for advising in this case.

If further sanctions against UK lawyers are issued, then Clooney – who holds British citizenship but has a property in the US with her husband George Clooney and spends a lot of time in the country – might be prevented from entering. She is also a practicing lawyer in the US, having qualified both at Oxford University and NYU.

Clooney, who was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and emigrated to the UK to escape the Lebanese Civil War, served as a special adviser in the ICC prosecutor’s investigation that led him to seek arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders last year.

In Khan’s statement at the time, he thanked Clooney and described her as part of ‘a panel of experts in international law’ who he had turned to for advice and to review the evidence in the case. In a follow up statement put out via her Clooney Foundation for Justice, she elaborated on her involvement.

‘More than four months ago, the prosecutor of the international criminal court asked me to assist him with evaluating evidence of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and Gaza. I agreed and joined a panel of international legal experts to undertake this task. Together we have engaged in an extensive process of evidence review and legal analysis including at the international criminal court in The Hague.’

She added, ‘Despite our diverse personal backgrounds, our legal findings are unanimous. We have unanimously determined that the court has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Palestine and by Palestinian nationals. We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including hostage-taking, murder and crimes of sexual violence. We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and extermination.’

Last November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity concerning Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza. The two leaders called the charges ‘absurd and false lies’. The court also charged three now-deceased Hamas leaders.

Of course, Trump is a vocal supporter of the Israeli government and claims the ICC ‘abused its power by issuing baseless arrest warrants’ against Netanyahu and Gallant. The president also claimed that Israel and the US are not party to the Rome Statute – the international treaty which established the ICC.

Both countries signed the statute in 2000, but later refused to ratify. Palestine ratified the treaty in 2015, meaning any crimes committed in Palestinian territories could be party to ICC jurisdiction.

In February, Trump’s order invoked the International Emergency Powers Act of 1977 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The first allows him to freeze assets, deny entry into the US and prohibit economic transactions to individuals deemed ‘hostile to American interests’. According to international criminal lawyer Alexandro Maria Tirelli that there is a stark possibility of UK lawyers facing sanctions.

The only way to challenge a formal sanction, then, would be to file a federal lawsuit on the basis of ‘violation of the right to due process’, ‘abuse of executive authority’ or ‘infringement of professional freedom’, as Tirelli explains.

However, there is little precedent for the hypothetical sanctions, how long they would last and whether they could be revoked. They also contradict the United Nations Basic Principles of the Role of Lawyers (1990) which states that governments have a duty to ensure their lawyers ‘are able to perform all of their professional functions without intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference’ and are ‘able to travel and to consult with their clients freely both within their own country and abroad’.

Trump is not famous for honouring precedents or indeed the laws of his own country. In 2023, four criminal indictments were filed against him. Following a six-week-long trial in New York last April, he was convicted in all 34 charges. However, neither the indictments nor his convictions disqualified him from running for office.

The president might continue to throw his weight around with these latest proposed sanctions, but if he does, he is likely to face a great deal of backlash and pushback – not least from the Clooneys. The couple, who married in 2014 and have seven-year-old twins, live between the UK, France and the US, so there’s no doubt that any threat to the lawyer’s movement between those countries will be taken incredibly seriously.