31 State Attorneys General Petition Supreme Court for 9/11 Funds
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird leads a bipartisan coalition seeking to unlock $3.5 billion in frozen Taliban assets for September 11 victims and their families.
A bipartisan coalition of 31 state attorneys general, led by Brenna Bird, has filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the Supreme Court of the United States to grant September 11 victims access to frozen Taliban assets. The coalition seeks to overturn a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruling that blocked the distribution of approximately $3.5 billion held by the Da Afghanistan Bank at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
While victims have won court-ordered judgments totaling $17 billion, the Second Circuit ruled that the $3.5 billion in question was unavailable because the United States Department of the Treasury froze the assets in 2021, eight days before the Taliban installed its government and took control of the central bank. The coalition, which includes North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson and South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley, argues this is a misinterpretation of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. They assert that federal statutes allow any U.S. assets, including those of terrorist parties, to be used to fulfill judgments regardless of when the Taliban government took power.
