Israel’s president has pushed back on Donald Trump’s claim that the two had spoken and that a pardon for Benjamin Netanyahu was “on its way.”
Isaac Herzog, 65, disputed what Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago while beside Netanyahu, who is accused of fraud, breach of trust, and bribery—charges which he denies.
Trump, 79, said he believed Herzog would issue the pardon, which he has called for at various points this year. “How do you not? He’s a wartime prime minister who’s a hero. How do you not give a pardon?”
Trump added: “I spoke to the president and it’s on—he tells me it’s on its way. You can’t do better than that, right?”
But Herzog’s office denied that the decision had been made after Netanyahu’s Nov. 30 pardon request.
“There has not been a conversation between President Herzog and President Trump since the pardon request was submitted,” his office said, according to CNN. Rather, Herzog’s office said he had spoken to a Trump aide and gave “an explanation” about “the stage of the process in which the request currently stands.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Trump, a felon, has applied the same label to Netanyahu’s trial as he did to his own past indictments: a “witch hunt.” In June, the president called for either the cancellation of the trial or a pardon for his ally, “who has done so much for the State” during the Israel-Iran conflict.
But the Jerusalem District Court promptly declined to put off the trial, which began in 2020 and comprises three different cases.
Netanyahu’s request to do so “does not present a detailed basis or reason that might justify canceling evidentiary hearings,” the three-judge panel wrote then.
Still, Trump reiterated his request to Herzog during an October speech to the Israeli parliament.
“Hey, I have an idea, Mr. President, why don’t you give him a pardon? Give him a pardon, come on,” Trump told Herzog. “This has been one of the greatest wartime presidents, and cigars and champagne—who the hell cares about that?”
Trump followed that up with a written plea last month, insisting that the trial was an “unjustified prosecution.”
Netanyahu, 76, is alleged to have accepted lavish gifts in the form of cigars and champagne from businessmen in exchange for favors. Prosecutors also say Netanyahu made a deal with a newspaper publisher to weaken a competitor in return for positive coverage, and that he pledged changes to regulations of the telecommunications company Bezeq in order to obtain better press from Walla news website.
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