Joshua Goodman and Molly Quell exclusively broke the details of a sexual misconduct accusation against the lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court that happened at the same time he was seeking war crimes charges against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his actions in Gaza.
Their reporting from the earliest rumors into a full-fledged AP investigation took weeks and was complicated by international intrigue. Not only did chief prosecutor Karim Khan categorically deny the third-party accusation that he groped and tried to coerce a female aide into a sexual relationship, but court officials openly suggested to AP that the whole thing was part of an ongoing smear campaign waged by Israeli intelligence.
Goodman, the AP’s Latin America correspondent, had been chasing another story about a possible conflict of interest involving the prosecutor’s investigation into Venezuela when he heard the first whispers of a brewing misconduct scandal from AP stringer Molly Quell, who, like the ICC, is based in the Hague, Netherlands.
They cast a wide net and a few days into the reporting were contacted by a tipster who provided a detailed timeline of events and enough leads to dig in.
The impact of the story was immediate. Two days after the AP story ran, Khan made a surprise announcement to cooperate with an investigation to clear his name, complaining that recent reporting had exposed the never-before reported details of the allegation. The Guardian newspaper cited the AP report in its own expansive takeout on the case over the weekend.
AP’s story, accompanied by photos of Khan and a Takeaways glance, was unmatched in its detail, sourcing and breadth. It scored strong play on the APNews app and was given prominent placement on such websites as The Washington Post, ABC News, PBS and the Times of Israel.
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