The state prosecution on Tuesday highlighted before the Jerusalem District Court clear contradictions that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made between his testimony in court and his testimony to police in Case 1000, the Illegal Gifts Affair.
As state prosecutor, Yonatan Tadmor cross-examined Netanyahu and made reference to varying narratives between his earlier testimony in court and his statements to the police regarding his acquisition of expensive cigars.
One of the foundational disputes in the case is whether, as the prosecution says, Arnon Milchin and his staff bought Netanyahu cigars to gain influence regarding a variety of business and legal issues – such as tax breaks, approval of business deals, or getting special American diplomatic intervention for him to get a special visa – or as the prime minister argues, because they were friends and Milchin was rich, and any actions he took on Milchin’s behalf also benefited the State of Israel.
An example of one of the contradictions highlighted on Tuesday was that in one instance, Netanyahu told the police that he had directed his drivers to buy cigars for him instead of receiving them from billionaire tycoon Milchin, who is at the center of the case. However, the police and the prosecution then questioned the prime minister’s seven different drivers, and six of them denied ever having bought him cigars.
The one driver who acknowledged doing so was seen as especially close to Netanyahu, working for him even when he was not prime minister.
Netanyahu says he asked his bureau chiefs to buy the cigars
Confronted with this information in court on Tuesday, Netanyahu altered his narrative, saying he meant that he had asked his bureau chiefs to buy the cigars and had just assumed they had passed the duty on to the drivers, but he did not really know how the bureau chiefs had handled the issue.
At other points, Netanyahu said the police had pressured him so much during his interrogation that at times he may have admitted to storylines and suggestions that they made, just to relieve the pressure, without having a full understanding of what was going on.
In another confusing exchange, Tadmor confronted Netanyahu with the idea that his meetings with Milchin had been spontaneous.
The prime minister then surprised Tadmor by arguing that their meetings had not been spontaneous but planned.
Tadmor then noted that Netanyahu’s own response to the indictment had specifically said that his meetings with Milchin had been spontaneous, revealing that he may have caught the prime minister in a classic lawyer’s bait-and-switch mind game.
It appeared that Netanyahu had told Tadmor that his and Milchin’s meetings were all planned, implying that they had met less often than people believed, and it would also mean that Milchin had given him fewer cigars. But in his rush to push that narrative and disagree with Tadmor in the moment, Netanyahu had forgotten the narrative that his lawyers had presented in his official response to the indictment, a document binding him as well.
At this point, Netanyahu’s response was less clear, and he admitted that he may not be recalling everything correctly.
Similarly, Netanyahu had trouble explaining statements that both he and Milchin had made to the police, suggesting that the prime minister knew Milchin’s chief aide, Hadas Klein, well. In court on Tuesday, Netanyahu said he did not know Klein well at all and that she was not involved in his life enough to know how often Milchin or others were buying him cigars.
Yet, Milchin and Klein – and even to some extent, Netanyahu himself when testifying to police in the past – have contradicted these points.
Dismissing the discrepancy as non-contradictory, the prime minister downplayed his prior statements, saying he only meant that he could have pleasant, superficial conversations with Klein as Milchin’s secretary while on his way to speak to Milchin.
The prosecution pointed out that Klein was Milchin’s chief aide and not merely a secretary.
Tuesday’s developments came as a relief to the prosecution after it had a rough day on Monday when the defense cross-examined police investigator Tzahi Hebkin, who admitted to breaking police and attorney-general regulations while questioning Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son, at an earlier stage in the investigation when law enforcement believed it could indict him as well.
First, Hebkin admitted to Netanyahu’s lawyer, Amit Hadad, that he had asked questions exceeding the limits that then-attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit had placed on the police. Next, multiple judges pressed Hebkin to explain why he had broken such regulations.
Hebkin responded, “I have no good answer for this.”
The judges cornered him even more and said he could not respond as though he were oblivious to the rules, given that he was a senior and experienced investigator. Once again, Hebkin simply stuck to his response that he “had no good answer for that.”
This was an opportunity for Hadad to try to show the judges that not only in the narrow case involving Yair Netanyahu, but also throughout the case against the prime minister, various police investigators played fast and loose with the rules – and that these alleged violations should at least disqualify various evidentiary items if not lead to the prime minister’s outright acquittal.
The prosecution has responded that it is possible for Netanyahu to be guilty through evidence obtained validly, despite the police at times having violated aspects of their mandate, without actually harming the credibility of the evidence, which is at the core of the case.
Netanyahu was indicted in 2020, and the trial’s first witness was called in April 2021. The prosecution brought witnesses from April 2021 to summer 2024, and after a several-month recess – granted to Netanyahu’s lawyers in order to prepare – the prime minister presented his side of the case from December 2024 until June of this year, when the prosecution started to cross-examine him.