President Obama had repeatedly said he would veto the bill, but Earnest’s comments are the first from the White House since the passage last week.
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Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said Monday that he’s “confident” Congress would override the president’s expected veto.
“The concept of sovereign immunity is one that protects the United States as much as any other country in the world”, Earnest said, referring to the rationale behind a 1976 law that gives other countries broad immunity from American lawsuits.
The White House left no doubt that President Obama would veto a bill allowing victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia in federal courts, saying it would expose USA interests to be sued in foreign courts.
The bill would override current Saudi claims to sovereign immunity, allowing families of September 11 terrorist attacks victims to bring a long-standing federal court case against the Saudi government for allegedly sponsoring the attacks.
The measure passed the Senate in May without opposition and sailed through the House by a large margin on Friday.
“The president intends to veto this legislation …” It submits those countries to a whole list of limitations and restrictions that isolate them not just from the USA, but in many cases, the rest of the world, he said.
Long debates are ongoing between US administration officials and democratic legislators to reconsider the bill in an attempt to find a way to avoid collision between the Obama administration and Congress.
Several suspicious connections were outlined in the report between the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi citizens, and the monarchy’s officials; however, no definitive comment is made about the Saudi involvement.
The White House reiterated that the “continued operation of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners, and emboldening violent extremists”.
Lawmakers in the US House of Representatives introduced the bill on Friday.
Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, who introduced the bill that passed the upper chamber in May, said that its main objective is to to seek justice for the almost 3,000 people who were killed in terror attacks on September 11, 2001. “You’re bound to see the Obama administration do everything they can to sustain a veto”. “It’s time to make this bill a reality, and I hope the president will sign it into law”.
Earnest also argued that the measure would risk sowing confusion by allowing individual courts to determine which countries sponsor terrorism; the government already has a formal system in place for making such a designation. Overriding a veto requires a recorded vote in support from two-thirds of lawmakers in each chamber.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on the planes that killed almost 3,000 people in NY, the Washington, D.C. area and Pennsylvania were Saudi nationals.
Saudi Arabia has been lobbying hard against the legislation.
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“The other concern that we have also articulated is that this law actually opens up the USA to risk being hauled into court in countries around the world”.
