Netanyahu and Trump Indictments: Same Politics, Critically Different Legal Scenarios - Israel News - Haaretz.com
During Israel’s 2019 election, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party filled Israel with giant posters showing the prime minister shaking hands with then-President Donald Trump, declaring Netanyahu as in 'a league of his own.' The message was clear: Netanyahu’s close ties with the 45th U.S. president were a unique asset for Israelis to consider when voting for their next leader.
Four years later, these same posters came to mind this weekend, when it was announced that Trump had just become the first former U.S. president to be indicted. He and Netanyahu are now definitely in a 'league of their own’ – the league of world leaders who have become criminal defendants. This is just one more point of similarity between the Israeli premier and the former president, both of whom have taken their center-right parties to the extremes and made a habit of attacking their countries’ democratic institutions.
Then U.S. President Donald Trump looks over to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, January 2020.Credit: Susan Walsh/AP
And yet, there are also some important differences between the Netanyahu and Trump indictments. Those differences can help explain the current crisis Israel is mired in regarding Netanyahu’s plans to weaken the judicial system, and can also offer some indispensable lessons to the United States, which will soon have to grapple with the reality of an indicted politician running for president.
The first key difference is that in Netanyahu’s trial, almost all the relevant information is currently available for the Israeli public to learn about and review. The Trump indictment, at the time that this article is being written, is under seal. CNN has reported that it contains “more than 30 counts related to business fraud,” and we know it has to do with Trump’s payments to at least one woman with whom he had an affair to keep her silent ahead of the 2016 presidential election. There is too little information known at this point to start comparing these charges with the bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges that have been made against Netanyahu by the state of Israel.
Another key difference is that Netanyahu is standing trial for actions he took as a sitting prime minister, mostly between the years 2013-2016. The Netanyahu indictment alleges that he used his power as prime minister to benefit business tycoons who either gave his family lavish gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, or in two other cases, turned their powerful media outlets in Israel into mouthpieces of the prime minister. Trump, as far as we know, is facing allegations that have to do with actions he took before being elected president, but in relation to the 2016 election campaign.
This leads us to another important distinction: Trump’s indictment arrived after he left office, as a former president planning another run in 2024. Netanyahu was indicted while serving as prime minister, an unprecedented event in Israeli history (his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, who was also indicted and later found guilty of bribery, resigned before the state officially indicted him.) Of course, Trump was also impeached twice by the U.S. House of Representatives as president, but the Senate twice did not remove him.
One of the Republican Party’s main criticisms of the Trump indictment is that it was put forward by a Democratic District Attorney in New York, a liberal state. This is not the case for Netanyahu: he was indicted by the State of Israel and specifically, by an attorney general that he himself had appointed and was considered one of his closest advisers. Avichai Mendelblit, the man who signed the Netanyahu indictment, was previously the leader's cabinet secretary and described the decision to indict a prime minister he had admired as one of the hardest in his life.
One common question that both Israelis and Americans will now have to grapple with is: Can an indicted politician lead a country? In Israel, this question has bitterly divided the nation over the past four years, leading to five election campaigns and a major crisis currently shaking the country as Netanyahu, a criminal defendant, is leading a judicial overhaul that will give his government almost unlimited powers.
At the same time, the Israeli Supreme Court in 2020 issued a unanimous ruling that the indictment itself should not bar Netanyahu from serving as prime minister, but forced him to sign a conflict of interest deal that forbids him from interfering with any decisions related to the judicial system. These days, he is locked in a new court battle, as he is being accused of breaking that agreement by promoting the judicial overhaul. The court will soon have to decide on that question as well.
In the United States, the question of an indicted presidential candidate –and perhaps future president – has never been dealt with before. Will the U.S. Supreme Court, like its Israeli counterpart, have to soon make a decision on this issue? If so, the justices will very likely look up relevant reading materials in Jerusalem.