One critic described Matthew Miller’s attack on United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese as a “Trumpian smearing of a principled human rights expert.”

U.S. State Department Matthew Miller faced calls to resign Thursday after he accused a United Nations special rapporteur of engaging in antisemitism—an attack that came days after the human rights expert presented a report concluding that Israel’s assault on Gaza has met the threshold of genocide.

Asked about the report during a press briefing on Wednesday, Miller said the U.S. has “for a longstanding period of time opposed the mandate of this special rapporteur, which we believe is not productive.”

“And when it comes to the individual who holds that position, I can’t help but note a history of antisemitic comments that she has made that have been reported,” Miller added, pointing to comments that Francesca Albanese—the U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories—“made in December that appeared to justify the attacks of October 7.”

The Israeli government has similarly attempted to cast Albanese as an antisemite, drawing pushback from human rights organizations and academics who say the claim is a baseless attempt to discredit her work.

“Israel has a long history of weaponizing false charges of antisemitism to attack and undermine those fighting for human rights for Palestinians—and U.N. officials and experts have been among the most consistent victims of those attacks,” Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams.