A senior aide to U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee stopped an urgent warning from reaching Washington that Israel might be violating one of President Donald Trump’s clearest demands, according to a new report.
The New York Times reported that Israel approved in March more West Bank settlements at once than it ever had before , and staff at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem saw the move as possibly crossing Trump’s red line against annexing the West Bank – so they wrote an urgent memo for policymakers in Washington.
According to three U.S. officials, Huckabee’s top adviser David Milstein quashed it.
The Times reported that this wasn’t the only time. A dozen people who work with Milstein told the paper that since he arrived in April 2025, he has repeatedly blocked or rewritten embassy reporting to make Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government look better.
When settler violence in the West Bank surged this spring, embassy staff drafted reports suggesting Israel was failing to stop it, but officials said Milstein blocked them. The cable that instead went to Washington, with Milstein listed as first author, was titled “Government Cracks Down on Escalating West Bank Violence.”
Milstein also buried a report on investigations into the killings of nine Palestinian Americans by Israeli settlers and soldiers, according to officials. Embassy staff found that most of the cases had stalled, some had been closed and no one had been charged. Milstein argued for telling Congress that Israel was handling the cases properly.
“If you don’t get accountability, you endanger more American citizens,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who led 30 lawmakers in asking for answers.
Embassy cables dropped from several a week to a few a month after Milstein took control of the section that handles Palestinian affairs. Staffers told the Times they stopped writing reports because they expected him to block them, and he also reportedly asked colleagues whether they were “pro-Israel” or “pro-Hamas.”
The gap between what the embassy reported and what was in the news became wide enough that White House and State Department officials contacted embassy staff directly at least twice to find out what was happening, the Times reported.
Some senior White House officials have complained about Milstein to colleagues.
The Times said it isn’t clear whether Milstein’s actions changed White House policy. It also isn’t clear whether the blocked memos would have reached Trump himself. But since February, Trump has said little about annexation even as Israel has expanded its control of the West Bank.
Milstein, 36, is the stepson of right-wing radio host Mark Levin, a close ally of both Trump and Netanyahu, and officials told the Times those relationships affect how he is treated. He previously worked for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TeX) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“The embassy ought to tell Washington everything — the good, the bad and the ugly,” said Dan Kurtzer, who was ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush. “If they’re not doing so, they are damaging the policy-making process and possibly undermining the president’s policies.”
Huckabee didn’t address any of the specific incidents, and he blew off the Times’ reporting as “so lacking in fact that it ranks up with other Times farcical endeavors” and said he “categorically” rejects it.
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