Netanyahu trial defense presses Mandelblit over Eshel wiretap he ordered halted

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defense focused Sunday on a wiretap of his confidant Natan Eshel that former attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit said he had ordered stopped, pressing its argument that investigators pursued Netanyahu beyond the limits of the permission they received.

Testifying for a sixth day at the Jerusalem District Court, Mandelblit said investigators should have sought his approval before tapping someone involved in Netanyahu’s personal and political affairs. Police had obtained a court warrant, but Mandelblit said the operation had not been brought to him beforehand.

Defense lawyer Amit Hadad argued that Netanyahu was the real target of the surveillance. Prosecutor Keren Tzviran countered that the warrant concerned suspicions against Eshel himself, and that references to Netanyahu did not make every suspected offense listed in it an allegation against the prime minister.

The exchanges continued Hadad’s effort to establish where Mandelblit’s permission began and ended, and whether investigators gathered evidence outside those boundaries. Under Basic Law: The Government, opening a criminal investigation into a sitting prime minister requires the attorney-general’s consent.

Mandelblit, who authorized the investigations and later approved the indictment, was called to testify by the defense. His account has distinguished between approving subjects for investigation and supervising individual police actions: he said he expected major steps to come before him, but did not require investigators to seek permission for everything they did.

The Eshel wiretap, he maintained, was precisely the kind of sensitive operation that required his attention.

Mandelblit angry about Eshel wiretap

“It angered me very much,” Mandelblit said of learning about it. He said he had expected the proposal to be presented in advance and had instructed investigators to stop the surveillance once it came to his attention.

He explained that listening to someone handling political and diplomatic matters for Netanyahu risked capturing sensitive conversations. He did not recall specific political material emerging from the intercepted calls.

Hadad sought to show that the connection to Netanyahu was central to the operation. Citing the warrant, he pointed to its description of Eshel’s contact with the principal suspect, identified as a senior elected official, and argued that Eshel provided investigators with a way to listen to Netanyahu.

Tzviran disputed that reading. She said Eshel was himself a suspect and that, for example, the suspicion of obstruction concerned him rather than Netanyahu.

The questioning also exposed a broader disagreement over how precisely Mandelblit’s authorizations defined the investigation. Hadad asked whether he had approved inquiries into particular offenses. Mandelblit replied that he authorized subjects for investigation, distinguishing that decision from the specific offenses investigators identify when warning someone before questioning them as a suspect.

Investigations into alleged gifts may have gone beyond A-G orders

Later, Hadad returned to the early development of Case 1000, which concerns expensive gifts Netanyahu allegedly received from wealthy businessmen. Netanyahu is charged with fraud and breach of trust in that case and denies wrongdoing.

Hadad questioned whether permission to examine an apartment associated with businessman James Packer extended to investigating gifts from Arnon Milchan. He suggested investigators had gathered evidence beyond what Mandelblit allowed. Mandelblit repeatedly said he did not remember the detailed instructions Hadad described and did not recall investigators acting against such a restriction.

That exchange followed questioning last week about how the gifts inquiry developed. Mandelblit maintained then that testimony from Milchan’s assistant, Hadas Klein, describing a regular supply of gifts had changed his assessment of the evidence and justified moving to a full criminal investigation.

Hadad’s questioning has sought to reconstruct what investigators had already done before that point, testing the timing and scope of Mandelblit’s consent against their accounts and the records of his instructions.