Netanyahu Asks Israel’s President to Pardon Him in Corruption Cases

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the contentious appeal weeks after President Trump had made the same request to the Israeli president.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asked its president on Sunday to pardon him in his long-running corruption trial, a request that the president called “extraordinary” and that critics said would run counter to the rule of law.

Mr. Netanyahu’s unusual pre-emptive appeal to President Isaac Herzog, while his trial is still underway, came about two weeks after President Trump sent a letter to Mr. Herzog urging him to pardon the Israeli prime minister.

A statement by the Israeli president’s office said the request would have “significant implications,” and that he would “responsibly and sincerely consider” it after seeking expert opinions.

Mr. Netanyahu said he believed that canceling his trial would help heal the divisions in Israeli society. But the immediate effect of the request appeared to amplify the rifts that have intensified over two years of war and his long battle with the judiciary.

Mr. Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in connection with three separate, but interlocking cases, and he has been on trial for five years. He has denied any wrongdoing in the cases, which center on accusations that he arranged favors for tycoons in exchange for gifts and sympathetic media coverage for himself and his family.

Soon after his request to the president was made public, Mr. Netanyahu explained his reasoning in a video statement. He said that he would have preferred to prove his innocence in court, but that the national interest demanded otherwise.

Citing Israel’s “security and political reality,” he called the requirement that he appear in court to testify three times a week “an impossible demand,” and he referred to Mr. Trump’s equally extraordinary interventions on his behalf as justification for seeking a pardon.

“President Trump called for an immediate end to the trial so that I may join him in further advancing vital and shared interests of Israel and the United States,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

Israeli legal experts said such a request by a sitting Israeli prime minister was without precedent and subverted the principle of equality before the law, a cornerstone of Israeli democracy.

“The general rule is that the president pardons those who have been convicted,” said Prof. Suzie Navot, an expert in constitutional law and vice president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group.

She said Mr. Netanyahu’s plea included none of the conditions that might have made it more palatable, including some admission of guilt or acceptance of responsibility and a readiness to remove himself from the political system.

Mr. Netanyahu was “trying to bypass all the usual procedures” and was asking Mr. Herzog to do the same, she added.

“For me,” she said, “this is a request for the abuse” of the president’s authority to grant pardons.

The cases against the prime minister have deeply polarized Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu said he believed that ending his trial would help foster national unity at a time when Israel urgently needs it, after two years of war.

But the request for clemency, like the graft trial itself, is more likely to prove divisive ahead of national elections scheduled to be held by late October. By law, Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, may run in the next election as long has he has not been convicted after exhausting an appeals process.

While Mr. Netanyahu’s political allies welcomed the request for a pardon and urged Mr. Herzog to grant it, his opponents recoiled from the idea of the trial being canceled without Mr. Netanyahu expressing any remorse or agreeing to quit public life.

Yair Lapid, the centrist leader of the parliamentary opposition, appealed to Mr. Herzog in a video statement.

“You cannot grant Netanyahu a pardon without an admission of guilt, an expression of remorse and an immediate withdrawal from political life,” he said.

Another political opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief, addressed the prime minister in a statement, saying: “Netanyahu, Israel is a state governed by the rule of law. There cannot be one legal system for ordinary citizens and another for you.”

Mr. Trump first raised the issue of a pardon publicly when he spoke in the Israeli Knesset, or Parliament, during a visit in October. He made the suggestion directly to Mr. Herzog, who was standing alongside him on the podium.

Like the American president, Mr. Netanyahu, a conservative, has long asserted that his legal troubles are the result of political persecution and the work of a liberal “deep state” that is trying to oust him by judicial means after failing to do so at the ballot box.

The country’s defense minister, Israel Katz, expressed support for the pardon request in a statement, calling on Mr. Herzog to “bring an end to the legal charges that were born in sin.”

Mr. Netanyahu’s current governing coalition, the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history, has further divided Israelis by leading an effort to overhaul the judiciary to curb the authorities of the courts and give more power to elected lawmakers.

His government is pushing ahead with more highly unpopular legislation. That includes a bill that would formalize exemptions from military service for many members of the fast-growing ultra-Orthodox community, leading some Israelis to view the pardon request as an attempt to divert attention.

Benny Gantz, another political rival and former military chief, described the pardon request as a “complete fake,” saying it was “designed to distract the public’s attention from the draft exemption law.”

Mr. Herzog’s office said the request would be sent to the authorities at the Ministry of Justice for their expert opinions, which would then be considered by the presidential legal team.

A former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, requested a pardon in 2017 from the previous president, Reuven Rivlin, but only after he had already been convicted and jailed for corruption. Mr. Olmert’s request was refused, though a parole board ultimately reduced his 27-month prison term by a third.

Mr. Olmert had resigned from office while he was under investigation, before being charged.

“A pardon in the middle of a legal process constitutes a fatal blow to the rule of law and the principle of equality before the law — the lifeblood of Israeli democracy,” Eliad Shraga, chairman of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, an advocacy group critical of Mr. Netanyahu’s government, said in a statement on Sunday.

Granting such a pardon, it said, “would send a clear message that there are citizens who are above the law.”

Lia Lapidot and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.

Related Content