A senior official in former president Joe Biden’s administration has told Sky News that he has no doubt that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza. 

Speaking to the Trump 100 podcast, Matthew Miller, who, as a state department spokesman, was the voice and face of the US government’s foreign policy under Mr Biden, revealed disagreements, tensions and challenges within the former administration.

In the wide-ranging conversation, he said:

• It was “without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes”;
• That Israeli soldiers were not being “held accountable”;
• That there were “disagreements all along the way” about how to handle policy;
• And that he “would have wanted to have a better candidate” than Mr Biden for the 2024 election.

Mr Miller served as the state department spokesman from 2023 until the end of Mr Biden’s presidential term. From the podium, his job was to explain and defend foreign policy decisions – from Ukraine to Gaza.

“Look, one of the things about being a spokesperson is you’re not a spokesperson for yourself. You are a spokesperson for the president, the administration, and you espouse the positions of the administration. And when you’re not in the administration, you can just give your own opinions.”

Now out of office, he offered a candid reflection of a hugely challenging period in foreign policy and US politics.

Gaza disagreements

Asked about Gaza, he revealed there were “small and big” disagreements within the Biden administration over the US-Israeli relationship.

“There were disagreements all along the way about how to handle policy. Some of those were big disagreements, some of those were little disagreements,” he said.

Pushed on rumours that then-secretary of state Antony Blinken had frustrations with Mr Biden over both Gaza and Ukraine policy, Mr Miller hinted at the tensions.

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“I’ll probably wait and let the secretary speak for himself… but I will say, speaking generally, look, it is true about every senior official in government that they don’t win every policy fight that they enter into. And what you do is you make your best case to the president.

“The administration did debate, at times, whether and when to cut off weapons to Israel. You saw us in the spring of 2024 stop the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel because we did not believe they would use those in a way that was appropriate in Gaza.”

Through the spring and summer of 2024, the Biden administration was caught between its bedrock policy of the unconditional defence of its ally Israel and the reality of what that ally was doing in Gaza, with American weapons.

Mr Mill said: “There were debates about whether to suspend other arms deliveries, and you saw at times us hold back certain arms while we negotiated the use of those arms…

“But we found ourselves in this really tough position, especially in that time period when it really came to a head… We were at a place where – I’m thinking of the way I can appropriately say this – the decisions and the thinking of Hamas leadership were not always secret to the United States and to our partners.”

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He continued: “And it was clear to us in that period that there was a time when our public discussion of withholding weapons from Israel, as well as the protests on college campuses in the United States, and the movement of some European countries to recognise the state of Palestine – appropriate discussions, appropriate decisions – protests are appropriate – but all of those things together were leading the leadership of Hamas to conclude that they didn’t need to agree to a ceasefire, they just needed to hold out for a little bit longer, and they could get what they always wanted.”

“Now, the thing that I look back on, that I will always ask questions of myself about, and I think this is true for others in government, is in that intervening period between the end of May and the middle of January [2025], when thousands of Palestinians were killed, innocent civilians who didn’t want this war, had nothing to do with it, was there more that we could, could have done to pressure the Israeli government to agree to that ceasefire? I think at times there probably was,” Mr Miller said.

Asked for his view on the accusation of genocide in Gaza, he said: “I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes.”

Challenged on why he didn’t make these points while in government, he said: “When you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion. You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government. The United States government had not concluded that they committed war crimes, still have not concluded [that].”

He went on to offer a qualification to his accusation.

“There are two ways to think about the commission of war crimes,” he said.

“One is if the state has pursued a policy of deliberately committing war crimes or is acting recklessly in a way that aids and abets war crimes. Is the state committing war crimes?

“That, I think, is an open question. I think what is almost certainly not an open question is that there have been individual incidents that have been war crimes where Israeli soldiers, members of the Israeli military, have committed war crimes.”

The Israeli government continues to strongly deny all claims that it has committed war crimes in Gaza.

On Joe Biden’s election hopes

Mr Miller also offered a candid reflection on the suitability of Mr Biden as a candidate in the 2024 US election. While Mr Biden initially ran to extend his stay in the White House, he stepped aside, with Kamala Harris taking his place as the Democratic candidate.

“Had I not been inside the government, had I been outside the government acting kind of in a political role, of course, I would have wanted to have a better candidate,” he said.

“It’s that collective action problem where no one wants to be the first to speak out and stand up alone. You stand up by yourself and get your head chopped off, stand up together, you can take action.

“But there was never really a consensus position in the party, and there was no one that was willing to stand up and rally the party to say this isn’t going to work.

“I don’t think there is anyone on the White House staff, including the most senior White House staffers, who could have gone to Joe Biden in the spring of 2023 or at any time after that and told him: ‘Mr President, you are not able to do the duties of this job. And you will not win re-election.’ He would have rejected that outright.”

The Trump presidency

On the Donald Trump presidency so far, he offered a nuanced view.

He described Mr Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as “an extremely capable individual” but expressed his worry that he was being manipulated by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I know the people in the Biden administration who worked with him during the first negotiations for Gaza ceasefire thought that he was capable.

“I think at times he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. And you see that especially in the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, where you see him go into a meeting with Vladimir Putin and come out spouting Russian propaganda… I think he would benefit from a little diplomatic savvy and some experienced diplomats around him.”

He continued: “But I do think it’s extremely important that when people sit down with an envoy of the United States they know that that envoy speaks for the President of the United States and it is very clear that Witkoff has that and that’s an extremely valuable asset to bring to the table.”

On the months and years ahead under Mr Trump, Mr Miller said: “The thing that worries me most is that Donald Trump may squander the position that the United States has built around the world over successive administrations of both parties over a course of decades.

“I don’t think most Americans understand the benefits that they get to their daily lives by the United States being the indispensable nation in the world.

“The open question is: will the damage that he’s doing be recoverable or not?”

Mount Etna in Sicily has erupted, sending a huge plume of ash into the sky.

Social media footage showed tourists running down the slopes as the highest active volcano in Europe erupted.

Italy‘s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said it expected the erupting ash cloud to disperse in a west-southwest direction.

The monitoring institute said the “amplitude values of volcanic tremors are currently high” and were “showing a tendency to increase”.

It added the eruptive activity has “continued with strombolian explosions of increasing intensity that, at the moment, are to be considered to be very intense and almost continuous”.

“In the last few hours there’s been reports of [a] little thin ash in Piano Vetore,” the institute said.

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The Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre Toulouse has issued a “code red” aviation warning, advising planes that a significant volume of ash in the atmosphere is likely.

Mount Etna is one of the world’s most active volcanoes. It was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2013.

The suspect in the Colorado attack told investigators he planned it for a year and said he wanted to “kill all Zionist people”, it is claimed.

Mohamed Soliman is accused of throwing Molotov cocktails and using a makeshift flamethrower on a group of people at a rally in support of Israeli hostages – with the FBI describing the incident as a targeted “act of terrorism”.

The 45-year-old, from El Paso County, Colorado, yelled “Free Palestine” during the attack, it is alleged.

Soliman has been charged with the federal crime of causing bodily injury because of actual or perceived race, colour, religion, or national origin. Authorities said they would announce further charges later on Monday.

Four women and four men, aged between 52 and 88, were injured and taken to hospitals. One victim is in a critical condition and others were seriously hurt, authorities said.

In a federal criminal complaint, investigators said Soliman confessed to the attack and told them that he had planned it for a year.

The alleged attacker said he researched on YouTube how to make Molotov cocktails – an improvised bomb made from a bottle filled with petrol and stuffed with a piece of cloth to use as a fuse, it was claimed.

He allegedly made them before driving to Boulder, Colorado, to carry out the attack on the weekly demonstration, where people were calling for release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Soliman told investigators he “wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead”, and “he would do it (conduct an attack) again”, according to the criminal complaint.

The suspect said he had been planning the attack for a year, and was waiting until after his daughter graduated to carry it out, it was alleged.

Unlit Molotov cocktails found near scene

According to the federal complaint, officers found a black plastic container with a yellow top near where Soliman was arrested, containing “at least 14 unlit Molotov cocktails”.

Investigators said the projectiles were comprised of “glass wine carafe bottles or Ball jars,” and that near the container “was a backpack weed sprayer, potentially containing a flammable substance”.

It was later determined the liquid in both the bottles and weed sprayer was the flammable liquid xylene, the complaint said.

Mark Michalek, a special agent in charge of the FBI’s Denver field office, described the sprayer as a “makeshift flamethrower”.

Trump condemns ‘horrific’ attack

Law enforcement officials told Sky News’ US partner network NBC News that Soliman is an Egyptian national who seemingly acted alone. They said he has no previous significant contact with law enforcement.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said Soliman was in the US “illegally”.

She posted on X: “He entered the country in August 2022 on a B2 visa that expired on February 2023. He filed for asylum in September 2022.”

US President Donald Trump said the “horrific” attack in Boulder “will not be tolerated in the United States of America”.

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Police chief Steve Redfearn said the attack happened at around 1.26pm local time on Sunday and initial reports were that “people were being set on fire”.

“When we arrived we encountered multiple victims that were injured, with injuries consistent with burns,” Mr Redfearn said.

The attack happened as a “group of pro-Israel people” were peacefully demonstrating, police said.

The walk is held regularly by a volunteer group called Run For Their Lives, which aims to raise awareness of the hostages who remain in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was praying for the full recovery of the people wounded in the “vicious terror attack” in Colorado.

“This attack was aimed against peaceful people who wished to express their solidarity with the hostages held by Hamas, simply because they were Jews,” he said.

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US Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, a prominent Jewish Democrat, said the attack was “horrifying” and “this cannot continue”, adding: “We must stand up to antisemitism.”

The attack follows the arrest of a Chicago-born man in the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington DC two weeks ago.