A spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Thursday that the International Criminal Court sanctions that the White House implemented by executive order removes provisions Democrats objected to during Senate negotiations on the sanctions that fell apart last week.

Democrats had been demanding changes to the House-passed ICC sanctions bill to protect U.S. companies, especially technology companies and their foreign subsidiaries, and U.S. allies, from sanctions. They also said they wanted to protect the ICC’s investigation into Russian President Vladimir Putin, which the Biden administration had supported.

“Leader Schumer has been crystal clear that the ICC needs to be reformed and reshaped due to its deep bias against Israel,” Schumer spokesperson Angelo Roefaro told JI. “This EO seems to include the strong provisions that go after the ICC on Israel, but does not include the problematic extraneous provisions unrelated to Israel included in the Republican ICC bill that the Democratic offer sought to fix to protect the ICC’s work against Putin.”

The legislation does contain greater protections for tech companies, but it’s not clear what provisions relating to the Putin investigation Schumer’s spokesperson is referring to.

A source close to the negotiations confirmed that some of Democrats’ negotiating requests had been included in the White House’s executive order. It’s not clear whether the White House’s move will prompt Senate Republicans to put forward a new version of the bill with matching language which could receive more Democratic support.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the lead Senate sponsor of the ICC sanctions bill and the lead GOP negotiator, did not respond to a request for comment.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told JI on Thursday evening that Republicans wanted to ensure “that the bill still had the teeth in it and did the things that we wanted it to do,” adding that they were “perfectly willing to work with Democrats on an amendment process that would have gotten some of those changes perhaps made.”

Senate Democrats had been insisting on changes to the base legislation before they would allow it to move forward, not just the possibility of amending it.

While both the bill and the executive order place sanctions on any foreign person or entity that “directly engaged in any effort by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute” Americans and U.S. allies like Israel, or who materially assisted or provided support for such activity, the executive order contains a broader exemption relating to American citizens, residents, companies and other entities.

That exemption defines Americans exempt from sanctions to include any company or entity “organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including a foreign branch, subsidiary, or employee of such entity).”

The proposed legislation, by contrast, only exempted any “foreign branch” of a U.S. company, not foreign subsidiaries. 

An exemption for foreign subsidiaries of U.S. technology companies and protection from retroactive sanctions for past cooperation with the court — which the executive order provides — were a key sticking point in negotiations, according to a source familiar with the situation. Democrats demanded that such subsidiaries be fully exempted from sanctions.

But while U.S. tech companies would not be subject to sanctions, they or their subsidiaries could potentially still be prosecuted under a different provision of the executive order for facilitating sanctions evasion if they continue to support the ICC.

Jewish Insider’s congressional correspondent Emily Jacobs contributed reporting.