Twelve Officials Who Resigned Over Gaza Call on 2028 Candidates to Bar Biden-Era Policy Architects

Twelve former U.S. government officials who resigned in protest of Washington's Gaza policy have released a statement calling on 2028 presidential candidates to pledge they will not appoint the officials who built that policy.

The group, calling itself Gaza Resignees, includes former State Department officials Josh Paul, Annelle Sheline and Stacy Gilbert, former diplomats Hala Rharrit and Mike Casey, former White House official Anna Del Castillo, former USAID senior adviser Alexander Smith, former Army officer and Defense Intelligence Agency official Harrison Mann, former Air Force Maj. Riley Livermore, former Navy Lt. Cmdr. Hani Z. Nofal, and former political appointees Tariq Habash and Lily Greenberg Call.

The statement accuses senior Biden administration officials of using their post-government careers to rehabilitate their records.

"They have blood on their hands," the former officials say in a video released with the pledge.

The group alleges that officials "violated U.S. and international law by providing U.S. weapons while Israel indiscriminately and disproportionately attacked civilians and civilian infrastructure, and as Israel arbitrarily blocked humanitarian assistance to Gaza." That is an allegation from the group, not a legal finding; no court or independent tribunal has ruled on the claim.

In the video, the signatories read their call over images of former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, now a board member at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank. Mann speaks over footage of Brett McGurk, the former White House Middle East coordinator now with venture capital firm Lux Capital and a CNN commentator. The video also shows former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and former USAID Administrator Samantha Power, who both moved to Harvard's Kennedy School after leaving office.

"We have watched as elite institutions have welcomed these officials," Mann says. "We have watched as these officials have tried to launder their bloody reputations," Paul adds, with Rharrit continuing, "and prepare to re-enter the halls of power."

The pledge asks 2028 candidates to acknowledge U.S. "complicity" in what the group calls genocide in Gaza, and to exclude from their administrations any past or present appointee who was "an architect, leader, defender, or key enabler" of that policy. The statement frames Gaza as "a litmus test for the credibility of American politicians and the viability, in particular, of Democratic candidates."

Top Biden administration officials at the time acknowledged Palestinian civilian suffering but continued to defend Israel's right to self-defense following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. U.S.-made weapons have reportedly been photographed at the scene of Israeli strikes in Gaza on multiple occasions, though U.S. authorities have not confirmed those identifications.

According to Gaza's Health Ministry, more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 175,000 wounded since October 2023, a figure Israeli officials dispute. The ministry also reports widespread destruction across the territory. More than 1,500 Palestinians have reportedly been killed in Gaza since an October 2025 ceasefire took effect, though the sourcing for that specific tally was not detailed.