NYT: Top Huckabee Aide Blocked, Altered Negative Reports on Israel Destined for Top Officials

A top aide to Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, blocked or altered diplomatic reports — reports headed for top U.S. officials in Washington, D.C. — that criticized Israel.

Indeed, The New York Times divulged, David Milstein “has repeatedly suppressed or significantly revised embassy reporting” to portray the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in “a favorable light.”

Huckabee, of course, denies the report from “The Slimes.” Yet Milstein sent reports that Huckabee hadn’t seen, the Times disclosed.

The report strongly suggests that Milstein and, more importantly, his boss — U.S. Ambassador Huckabee — are more loyal to Israel than to the United States.

The Allegations

The nut of the story is that Milstein is running cover for the Israeli government instead of moving truthful reports to U.S. officials in Washington, D.C.

In March, when Israel OK’d more settlements on the West Bank, “staff members at the United States Embassy in Jerusalem saw the move as potentially flouting one of President Trump’s explicit red lines for Israel — no annexation of the West Bank — and drafted an urgent report intended for policy makers in Washington,” the Times reported:

That memo never reached Washington. It was quashed by David Milstein, a top aide to Ambassador Mike Huckabee, according to three U.S. officials briefed on the process.

This was no isolated incident.

Since taking up his post in April 2025, Mr. Milstein, 36, has repeatedly suppressed or significantly revised embassy reporting on Israeli activities to present the Netanyahu government in a favorable light, according to a dozen people who work with or interact with Mr. Milstein in both Jerusalem and Washington.

When embassy officials wanted to report that the Israeli government failed to act on settler violence in the West Bank, Milstein “stymied” that effort. Instead, the Times divulged, the embassy cabled Washington that Israel was “cracking down” on the violence.

Milstein also “suppressed a detailed report that the embassy staff had written” about the murder of “nine Palestinian Americans by Israeli settlers and security forces.” That blocked lawmakers from getting details about the killings. As The New American reported last month, Israel-First Republicans blocked a measure in the U.S. Senate that would have required the State Department to produce a report.

“Soon after arriving in Jerusalem, Mr. Milstein began insisting on approving communications from the embassy section that handles Palestinian affairs, multiple officials with direct knowledge of the process said,” the Times continued:

The flow of cables plummeted from several a week to a few a month, as some staffers refrained from writing reports for fear that Mr. Milstein would block or rewrite them, these officials said. …

Mr. Milstein’s efforts have helped insulate Israel’s right-wing government against potential blowback from a Trump Administration that has been its closest ally.

Among the most contentious issues on which Mr. Milstein has intervened is the accelerating expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Is Huckabee in the Dark?

Frighteningly, it appears that Milstein is something of a lone wolf who does what he wants, the Times reported. That invites the question of whether Huckabee is properly supervising him.

As ambassador, Huckabee “is required to sign off on most cables and significant decisions, but officials said Mr. Milstein sometimes acts on his own,” the Times continued. And Huckabee has conspired with Milstein to “to suppress or recast information, these officials said.”

Yet “in several cases when he believed Mr. Milstein had gone too far, they said, Mr. Huckabee has reined him in,” the Times explained.

The Times’ reporting included interviews with 15 American officials and nine diplomats. It also “reviewed dozens of documents, cables, memos and other internal communications.”

The officials who spoke to the Times — career bureaucrats and political appointees — think Milstein’s rogue activities “are undermining standard diplomatic work” and that “they contradict the president’s stated policies.”

White House officials are also concerned, the Times reported, and “have expressed frustration to colleagues over some of Mr. Milstein’s actions, according to four officials, who have either witnessed or been briefed on the dissatisfaction.”

For his part, Huckabee defended Milstein. The story is “lacking in fact” and is of a piece with the newspaper’s other “farcical endeavors,” Huckabee told the paper. “I personally and categorically refute the elements of your proposed ‘story,’” he said.

“People who interact with Mr. Milstein professionally, however, say he goes to unusual lengths to frame Israel in a positive light,” the Times reported:

He has blocked reporting from being sent, rewritten cables to deliver a different — sometimes opposite — message from the original, and delayed approving drafts until the topic was no longer relevant, these officials said.

In the summer of 2025, for instance, dozens of Palestinians seeking food were killed near the distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, backed by Israel and the United States. American diplomats in Israel drafted a cable, viewed by The Times, warning that the foundation’s distribution process was chaotic and deadly and risked more “mass casualty events.”

Mr. Milstein rewrote the cable to declare GHF’s operation a success while overlooking the mass casualties, according to people who saw the cable and were briefed on the editing process.

Troubled by glaring discrepancies between news coverage and the embassy’s official reports, White House and State Department officials seeking a clearer picture of events bypassed standard channels at least twice to communicate directly with embassy staff, according to two officials briefed on the outreach and an internal communication from late this summer seen by The Times.

Veteran American diplomats said that withholding or twisting the information sent to Washington should raise serious concerns.

Levin Defends Huckabee and Milstein

Understandably, Huckabee and Israel-First podcaster Mark Levin — Milstein’s stepfather — have panicked.

On X, Huckabee called the report a “despicable smear.” “Sleazy reporters at the Slimes should dream of having the integrity Milstein does!” the furious ambassador wrote.

Levin thinks the government must find out who spoke to the Times. And, he warned, the newspaper could be sued for defamation.

“The story is filled with anonymous sources — disgruntled bureaucrats, no doubt — for the purpose of providing the leakers with cover,” Levin wrote on X:

Meanwhile, the one named source in the story, Ambassador Mike Huckabee, declared that he “personally and categorically refutes” the story. This is yet another attack on the President’s appointees.

The use of anonymous sources, as the Times knows, makes it virtually impossible to defend oneself, while enabling the anonymous leakers wide latitude to smear and deceive.  What is clear, however, is that there were numerous unlawful and potentially dangerous leaks committed by the Times’ anonymous sources.  Diplomatic Security should immediately conduct an investigation and identify those responsible.

This morning, Levin continued fuming:

Nothing inappropriate or improper was done by David. Everything done by the book. The reporters are pushing a deep state-Biden-pro-Palestinian agenda in an act of grotesque character assassination.

That invites the observation that “diplomatic security should immediately conduct an investigation” to discover how Levin knows that “everything [was] done by the book” at a U.S. embassy.

Huckabee’s loyalties are now suspect — as are Milstein’s. As The New American reported in June, Huckabee’s preposterously claimed that “without Israel … there would not be an America. We owe our very existence to what happened in this land.”

As well, he told podcaster Tucker Carlson that Israel is entitled to conquer the entire Middle East from the Euphrates River to the Nile. That remarkable claim is not official U.S. policy on Israel or the Middle East.