United States President Donald Trump has called for Israel to cancel the corruption trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or grant him a pardon, describing the case against the Israeli leader as a “witch-hunt”.
Trump issued the call on Wednesday on behalf of his close Israeli ally, who was indicted in 2019 in Israel on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
Netanyahu’s trial began in 2020 and involves three criminal cases. He has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty.
“Bibi Netanyahu’s trial should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY, or a Pardon given to a Great Hero, who has done so much for the State (of Israel),” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform using the Israeli leader’s nickname, adding that he had learned that Netanyahu was due to appear in court on Monday.
“Such a WITCH HUNT, for a man who has given so much, is unthinkable to me,” Trump added.
Israeli media have reported that cross-examination of Netanyahu began on June 3 in a Tel Aviv court and was expected to take about a year to complete.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog has the power to pardon Netanyahu, but has been quoted by Israeli media as saying that a pardon is “not currently on the table”.
Herzog also said that “no such request had been made”, according to the reports.
Trump also said in his post: “It was the United States of America that saved Israel, and now it is going to be the United States of America that saves Bibi Netanyahu.”
It was unclear what Trump or the US government could do to stop Netanyahu’s corruption trial.
Trump’s words of support for Netanyahu contrasted with the rare public rebuke he issued against the Israeli leader on Tuesday over Israel’s post-ceasefire strikes on Iran.
“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before. The biggest load that we’ve seen. I’m not happy with Israel,” Trump told reporters at the time.
Iran and Israel, he added, had been fighting “so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing”.
This was always the play for Netanyahu. If he becomes the prime minister who significantly weakened or eliminated most of Israel’s enemies (by any means necessary, including genocide), who is going to charge him in Israel?
Didn’t he already ram through that judicial reform that basically made him untouchable? Also I’m pretty sure that Netanyahu has been unjailable since October 8th 2023, since he was able to spin the worst security breach in modern israeli history as somehow not his fault.
Security breach or simply… Bait. There’s a possibility that Netanyahu’s group simply used the October 7 breach to start a war and remove any possibility of him being ousted. With endless war, Bibi’s group stays in power indefinitely.
I was under the impression the Mossad knew and let it happen? I swear there was a leaked story saying that they knew it was going to happen and used it as an excuse to accelerate the genocide?
The attacks were followed by an explosion of false news about women being raped, babies being beheaded, families being burned alive etc. This coupled with Israeli troops firing on everyone, their people or resistance operatives. Israel also deliberately prevented any UN missions from entering Israel to investigate the deaths.
We will never be able to have definitive proof of this as long as Israel stands, but it would be very naive to think they didn’t use the whole opportunity to transform the Gaza strip into a slaughterhouse. Specially when Bibi’s government was in crisis.
The Israel and Iran fighting for so long “they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing” line is pretty good
It’s been living rent free in my head all day
He knows deep down this guy is going to keep doing shit like attacking Iran if he’s at risk of going down for this corruption stuff. That and the whole doing the very out loud genocide when Trump just believes they can quietly push all Palestinians into Egypt and Syria and so on and take the land.
Even israel engaged in anti-Semitic attacks smh
Israel is Hamas
