Trump calls for Israel’s President to pardon Netanyahu. Could it happen?

JERUSALEM - US President Donald Trump was addressing a grateful Israeli Parliament on Oct 13, 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
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“Hey, I have an idea,” Mr Trump said to the holder of Israel’s largely ceremonial presidency, Mr 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 Professor 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, Prof Navot said.

Israel’s president at the time, Chaim Herzog – the father of the current president – issued a “pre-indictment pardon” for the head of Shin Bet and several of his assistants, citing national security concerns, when their roles in the cover-up emerged in a trial of other officials in the case.

The pardon was challenged, and Israel’s Supreme Court ended up weighing whether presidential pardon powers extended to those not yet charged with or convicted of a crime.

The court’s majority concluded that an expansive view of the pardon power was appropriate given the specifics of the case – a ruling that may not lend itself to a blanket interpretation of the reach of presidential clemency.

“It’s a precedent that is difficult to apply in a typical criminal case,” Prof Navot said.

Although a president could point to the Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling, the underlying facts in Mr Netanyahu’s trial are different, she said.

The charges against Mr Netanyahu are related to his conduct, not national security, and are of a kind that numerous Israeli leaders have faced before, Prof Navot said.

As a result, she added, a pardon at this stage could be seen as undermining the concept that “all men are equal before the law.”

Israeli criminal courts have convicted chief rabbis, a former president and a former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, multiple times.

In 2010, an Israeli court convicted a former president, Moshe Katsav, on rape charges related to actions earlier in his career, as well as lesser charges from actions while he was president.

Following Katsav’s conviction, his successor to the office, Mr Shimon Peres, said, “Citizens of only one kind exist in Israel – and all are equal in the eyes of the law.”

Mr Trump has railed against the case Mr Netanyahu faces before.

In June, he posted on social media that the trial would get in the way of negotiations over ending the war with Hamas, referring to Mr Netanyahu by his nickname, Bibi, and writing, “LET BIBI GO, HE’S GOT A BIG JOB TO DO!”

Mr Trump has likened the criminal charges against Mr Netanyahu to the accusations he himself has faced in the United States, and has dismissed both as political witch hunts.

Mr Trump wields significant influence in Israel, particularly now that he has helped to broker a ceasefire
that secured the release of hostages in the Gaza Strip and could be a crucial step in ending the war there.

Mr Herzog could choose to pardon Mr Netanyahu if he is convicted at trial.

But any pardon while the legal process is still underway could be interpreted as an attack on the rule of law, Prof Navot said, and virtually any Israeli could claim the legal standing to contest it.

Originally expected to last a year or more, the criminal proceedings against Mr Netanyahu have been delayed several times, including by coronavirus restrictions.

It was only in December 2024 that Mr Netanyahu finally took the stand.

“I am shocked by the magnitude of this absurdity,” he said then.

“I am the prime minister, I am running a country, I am running a war,” he added. “I am not occupying myself with my future, but rather with that of the state of Israel.”

And he has, on occasion since then, sought delays and extensions, citing his schedule and diplomatic developments. NYTIMES