Most eyes were on former governor Mike Huckabee, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. envoy to Israel, during a Senate Foreign Relations hearing on Tuesday. But Reed Rubinstein, nominee for legal adviser to oversee some 300 U.S. State Department attorneys and staff, also addressed areas of interest and concern to American Jews and those who care about Israel.
Introducing Rubinstein to the Senate panel, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that he first met the former deputy associate attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department and former U.S. Education Department general counsel when the two worked together in 2014 on Cruz’s first piece of legislation that passed—a bill that granted Purple Hearts to the victims of the Fort Hood terror attack.
“He is exceptionally well qualified to serve as legal adviser to the State Department with his strong legal background and previous experience,” Cruz said.
Rubinstein, who told the committee in his opening remarks about his wife, three sons, three daughters-in-law and “seven, God-willing soon to be eight grandchildren,” testified before the committee seated before one of his sons, who wore a yarmulke.
“President Trump and Secretary Rubio’s policies, orders and directives are crystal clear. The department must champion core American interests and always put America and American citizens first,” Rubinstein said. “To that end, it has been tasked with defending American sovereignty and protecting the rule of law.”
“This means, among other things, excluding or removing aliens, including student visa holders, who violate our laws, who preach or call for sectarian violence, for overthrowing or replacing the culture on which our constitutional republic stands or who provide advocacy, aid or support for foreign terrorists such as the bestial perpetrators of the Oct. 7 atrocities,” he said.
“If confirmed as the legal adviser, I will work with my career and political colleagues to provide the best possible legal advice and counsel to get these things done,” he said.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the committee ranking member, asked Rubinstein if he stands by a social media post, in which he wrote that the Biden administration had a “massive program to overthrow the Israeli government.”
“I don’t have the checks that were written,” Rubinstein said. “I do believe that there are sufficient facts to support that statement.”
“During the Obama administration, the State Department was running money to fund an anti-government operation inside of Israel,” he testified. “Many of the same people, who were involved in the Obama administration State Department, came back under President Biden, and it appears to me, based on emails that I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and that we read, that the same playbook was being run.”
Rubinstein wrote on LinkedIn that there was a “massive program to overthrow the Israeli government in the middle of a multi-front war” in February 2024, citing a Breitbart article, which in turn cited an article from then JNS columnist Caroline Glick.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Rubinstein referred to a bipartisan 2016 Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report that found that the Obama administration had given nearly $500,000 dollars to an organization called OneVoice, which used the money to build voter databases that were then in turn used in an effort to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the 2015 Israeli elections.
“The report was not acknowledged much in the United States,” Rubinsteid said. “But it sure made an impact in Israel when it was issued.”
Shaheen said that his views cast doubt on Rubinstein’s ability to give the State Department impartial legal advice.
“I have heard these conspiracy theories before,” Shaheen said. “I’ve been here through the Obama administration, through the first Trump administration, through the Biden administration, and I can tell you that I never heard anybody in any of those administrations talking about a multi-front war trying to overthrow the Israeli government.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said.
Rubinstein replied that he was basing his statements on the Senate report and from emails that he had obtained through the Freedom of Information Act from Biden administration officials.
“They say what they say, and perhaps they lend themselves to different interpretations. I’m willing to concede that,” Rubinstein said. “But I believe there was a good faith basis for what I said.”
Rubinstein, who is Jewish and who is a senior vice president at America First Legal, also faced questions from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) about a post in which he said that K-12 teachers are being taught by “leftist, antisemite professors” and that the American system of teacher training “is not fixable.”
“The way that we train teachers in this country has some real issues, and often teacher colleges in public education are very ideological,” Rubinstein said.
“Now you’re giving a careful answer,” Kaine replied.