AG: New appointments are politicizing police internal affairs, could harm election integrity

Baharavi-Miara warns amendment giving justice minister control over investigative unit is causing ‘politicization of law enforcement’ as she asks top court to halt the appointments

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said Thursday in a Supreme Court filing that Justice Ministry Director-General Itamar Donenfeld inappropriately pushed through an appointment to the committee that will select the leadership of the Department of Internal Police Investigations, politicizing it.

The DIPI is a Justice Ministry department that investigates police.

Baharav-Miara called on the court to halt appointments to the committee and to the DIPI’s top jobs, citing concerns that an unduly politicized DIPI could “instill fear in officers, investigators, prosecutors and journalists” and “harm law enforcement’s ability to perform its duty to ensure the integrity of the coming election,” on October 27.

The Knesset in June passed an amendment that would move the DIPI from the State Attorney’s Office to the direct control of the justice minister, with proponents of the legislation citing prosecutors’ cooperation with police to argue that DIPI had an institutional bias against specific targets associated with the political right.

Baharav-Miara, who along with other senior legal officials have warned the legislation undermines DIPI’s independence and politicizes its work, filed the brief to the court as part of petitions against the measure. Critics have also argued that the law was part of the government’s broader drive to assert control over levers of legal power in the country, and reduce checks on government authority.

The amendment empowers a five-member committee to appoint the two top officers of the new DIPI, the majority of which would be controlled or influenced by the justice minister or the ministry’s director-general.

The committee members, according to the amendment, are the Justice Ministry director-general; the civil service commissioner; a criminal defense attorney chosen by the justice minister in consultation with the Public Defender’s Office; a person with experience in interrogations or criminal prosecutions who is chosen by the Justice Ministry director-general in consultation with the civil service chief; and a retired judge chosen by the head of the Knesset State Control Committee, which is always chaired by a member of the opposition.

Justice Minister Yariv Levin has already selected a lawyer to sit on the committee, but the retired judge has not yet been selected, Baharav-Miara revealed in the court filing. She also said that Levin, who wants to increase government control over the judiciary, had asked and received permission to be represented by counsel from outside the Attorney General’s Office in hearings on the amendment.

Baharav-Miara charged that Donenfeld exercised undue influence over the selection of the person he was meant to appoint in consultation with Civil Service Commissioner Doron Cohen.

Donenfeld, a political appointment of Levin’s, on June 17 submitted for Cohen’s approval the name of just one candidate, whom Cohen okayed following a June 21 interview, according to Baharav-Miara.

The candidate’s namew as redacted in documents appended to the court filing. One of the documents, a letter from Donenfeld to Cohen, said the Attorney General’s Office found “no legal obstacle” to putting the candidate on the committee.

Between that candidate, the lawyer appointed by Levin, and Donenfeld himself, “the result… is that a majority of committee members — three of five members — are representatives of the minister, or were appointed with his significant involvement,” Baharav-Miara said.

Moreover, she noted that the amendment passed by the Knesset set three members as the legal quorum for the committee to make personnel decisions in the new DIPI.

“These facts… illustrate the political involvement in establishing the committee, and the politicization of law enforcement that the amendment is leading to,” Baharav-Miara said.

She also said the amendment was practically in effect despite being supposed to come into effect only after the election.

“In practice, the amendment’s main stipulations — the appointment orders, for all the politicization that ails them — came into effect immediately with the publication of the law,” she said. “The justice minister, who is a member of the outgoing government, is working to promote, through these appointments, the establishment of a new enforcement body already at the height of election season, and create a fait accompli for the next government.”