Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on February 13, 2017

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU consults with Avichai Mandelblit in December of last year while he was cabinet secretary. Today, the current Attorney General holds the fate of Prime Minister in the palm of his hands.. (photo credit:REUTERS)

A significant change may have occurred in the fate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the weekend with the Channel 2 report that the police will recommend to indict him.

Until then, the Jerusalem Post had learned that Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit viewed those wanting to indict Netanyahu in the police and the state prosecutors office as lower level officials.

At the highest levels of the police and the state prosecutors office, Mandelblit believed that there was unanimity that the Netanyahu cases, while problematic in appearance, were borderline and risky cases when it came to trying to win a conviction in court.

If the police recommend indicting Netanyahu it would be a watershed moment. No longer would he be able to credibly say there is nothing. No longer would he be able to say that he will provide answers and it will all go away after being questioned just like happened with Opposition leader Isaac Herzog.

One of the primary arms of law enforcement in the country would be saying that its highest levels officials believe the prime minister is guilty of a crime.

And yet Netanyahu would still have a strong chance of staying in power and dodging the bullet.

At the end of the day, the police do not decide who to indict, only Mandelblit does.

In fact, the past in major cases involving public officials, Mandelblits predecessor, Yehuda Weinstein overruled the police a number of times.

Weinstein overruled the police who had recommended indicting Avigdor Liberman in a massive multi-million dollar money-laundering scam (he was eventually indicted and acquitted in a much smaller affair) and former IDF chief-of-staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi for breach of trust in the Harpaz Affair.

Notably, in the same Harpaz Affair, Weinstein overruled the police who wanted to indict Mandelblit, at the time Netanyahus cabinet secretary, for obstruction of justice in delaying advising Ashkenazi to provide evidence to the police in the Harpaz Affair.

The fact that the police in the past wanted him indicted, could also give Mandelblit some skepticism about automatically endorsing their recommendations for other public officials.

Little can be learned from the impact of a police recommendation regarding Ehud Olmert as he resigned even before they made their recommendation due to a much larger mountain of evidence and corruption affairs and much weaker political support.

But there are also other reasons that the police and an attorney-general see things differently.

Police interrogators often feel officials should be indicted if they are lying or seeming to evade questions or conceal something.

Attorney-generals think more in terms of what can be proven in court and what are the chances of a conviction.

The police also know that they will not be held responsible for bringing down a prime minister, since their recommendation is not binding.

In contrast, Mandelblit has made it clear that his standard for indicting a prime minister is super high in terms of chances of conviction since he would shoulder full responsibility for bringing down Netanyahu with an indictment.

That said, a police recommendation to indict shifts the incentives for Mandelblit.

As long as the top police and top prosecutors recommended not to indict, then Mandelblit could still be in a strong position defying lower level police and prosecutors, many in the media and Netanyahus detractors by not indicting him. He could fall back on simply following the recommendations of the rest of the system.

If the police at the highest levels recommend indicting Netanyahu, and Mandelblit overrules them, he is sticking his neck out.

Mandelblit at the end of the day is a man of the system and his next aspiration in five years would be an appointment to the Supreme Court.

For that, he will need to be taken seriously by the legal establishment far more than he will need political favors, even from Netanyahu.

In that sense, Netanyahus fate could come down to head state prosecutor Shai Nitzan. If Nitzan goes with the police, Mandelblit might be hard-pressed to agree. If Nitzan goes against the police, Mandelblit will still have cover to override the police claiming support from within the system.

Of course, Mandelblit could still override Nitzan, as Weinstein overruled the state prosecutor in his day regarding the multi-million dollar Liberman case.

But Weinstein was far older (about 20 years) and had no great future ambitions to join the Supreme Court (and he was too old to be eligible.)

At the end of the day, the chances of Mandelblit indicting Netanyahu are still low, due to prior Supreme Court rulings making it harder to win public corruption cases, but a recommendation by the police as an institution to indict Netanyahu would definitely move the flagpoles against the prime minister.

Relevant to your professional network? Please share on Linkedin

Prev Article

Margalit: Dont let PM fly while under probe

Former IDF intel chief: Trump should push UN to ban Iran missile tests

Next Article

Read more:
Analysis: What happens to Netanyahu if the police recommend indicting him? - Jerusalem Post Israel News

Category: Ashkenazi
Tags: