Donald Trump continues to press for the corruption trial of Benjamin Netanyahu comes to nothing. The Republican president has sent a letter to the Israeli president Isaac Herzog to pardon the prime minister for confronting, according to his point of view, “a political and unjustified persecution”.
It is not the first time that Trump has urged Herzog to pardon Netanyahu. He already did so during his speech in the Knesset on October 13 to celebrate the entry into force of the first phase of the peace plan for the Gaza Strip. If on that occasion he surprised you with a tone between the sarcastic and the uncomfortable – for the recipient of his demands -, the petition has now been formalized.
“While I absolutely respect the independence of the Israeli judicial system and its requirements, I believe that this ‘case’ against Bibi, who has fought alongside me for a long time, even against Israel’s tenacious enemy, Iran, is a political and unjustified persecution,” Trump urges in the letter, revealed by the Israeli president’s office.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog meeting in Jerusalem with US Vice President JD VAnce.
Reuters
Trump requests a pardon for the “formidable and decisive” Netanyahu, with whom he has been able to reach a peace “pursued for at least 3,000 years.” Interpelling Herzog, he demands that he release the prime minister from the charges against him – in proceedings yet to be judged – and end the “legal war”.
Herzog has refrained from taking a position, stressing in a statement that the pardon request must be handled through “the corresponding legal channels”. He Canal 12 reported last month that there have been talks for Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, to introduce this measure.
Fraud and bribery
Netanyahu charges with three court cases since 2019known as the cases 1000, 2000 y 4000. In the first he is accused of receive luxury gifts —cigars, champagne and jewelry for his wife, essentially—from billionaire businessmen like Arnon Milchan and James Packer. The suspicion is that they were made in exchange for political favors.
“Cigars and a little champagne, who the hell cares?” Trump asked last October from the state of the Israeli Parliament.
He 2000 investigates an agreement with the owner of the newspaper Yedioth AhronothArnon Mozes, to support him from his meansoffering in exchange laws that limit competition from the rival newspaper Israel Hayom.
The most serious is the 4000. Netanyahu, during his tenure as Minister of Communications and then as Prime Minister, allegedly promoted regulations that favored the company Bezeq—controlled by Shaul Elovitch— in exchange for a more than kind editorial line for him and his wife on the news site Wallaproperty of the businessman.
In this process the charges include, in addition to fraud and breach of trust, bribery.
What Trump is asking is for a clean slate with Netanyahu even if it is proven that he has favored private interests with an estimated value of around 1.8 billion shekels – about 450 million euros – in profits for the Bezeq company.