President Trump was addressing a grateful Israeli Parliament on Monday, after the first of 20 hostages were released by Hamas in a deal he helped broker, when he made an unexpected suggestion: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, currently on trial for corruption, should be pardoned.
“Hey, I have an idea,” Mr. Trump said to the holder of Israel’s largely ceremonial presidency, Isaac Herzog. “Mr. President, why don’t you give him a pardon?”
Since 2020, Mr. Netanyahu has been on trial for corruption in three separate but related cases. He is accused of receiving cigars, Champagne, bracelets, bags and luxury clothes; disrupting investigative and judicial proceedings; and demanding fawning coverage by two leading Israeli news outlets. He has long denied the charges.
But legal experts in Israel questioned whether Mr. Netanyahu could actually be pardoned at this stage in his trial. While Israel’s president clearly has the power to pardon someone convicted of a crime, the country has seen just one notable case of a pre-emptive pardon, in 1986, and its value as precedent is uncertain.
“That was a very unusual case,” said Suzie Navot, a constitutional law expert and the vice president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute.
The case, Barzilai v. Government of Israel, stemmed from a cover-up by Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, after its agents executed two Palestinian militants involved in a 1984 bus hijacking. The security forces originally claimed that all four of the hijackers were killed in a takeover of the bus, but it later emerged that two of the hijackers had been taken alive and were then beaten to death. That prompted a scandal, much public turmoil and widespread calls for investigations in Israel, Ms. Navot said.
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