Mandelblit Pressed on Wiretap of Netanyahu Confidant That He Says He Ordered Stopped

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's defense team spent Sunday probing a wiretap on his confidant Natan Eshel, which former attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit says he ordered halted. The defense argues that investigators went after Netanyahu beyond the limits of the authority they were given.

Mandelblit was testifying for a sixth day at the Jerusalem District Court. He told the court that investigators should have come to him for approval before tapping someone involved in Netanyahu's personal and political affairs. Police had secured a court warrant, he said, but the operation was never brought to him in advance.

Defense lawyer Amit Hadad contended that Netanyahu was the true target of the surveillance. Prosecutor Keren Tzviran responded that the warrant dealt with suspicions against Eshel himself. In her view, references to Netanyahu in the warrant did not turn every suspected offense listed in it into an allegation against the prime minister.

The exchanges were part of Hadad's effort to map where Mandelblit's permission started and stopped, and whether investigators collected evidence outside those lines. Under Basic Law: The Government, a criminal investigation of a sitting prime minister requires the consent of the attorney-general.

Mandelblit, who authorized the investigations and later approved the indictment, was called by the defense. He has drawn a line between approving subjects for investigation and overseeing each police action. He said he expected major steps to be brought to him, but did not require investigators to ask permission for everything. The Eshel wiretap, he maintained, was exactly the sort of sensitive step that demanded his attention.

"It angered me very much," Mandelblit said of learning about the surveillance. He had expected the proposal to be put before him beforehand, and he told investigators to stop once it came to his notice. He explained that listening in on someone handling political and diplomatic matters for Netanyahu risked picking up sensitive conversations. He did not recall any specific political material emerging from the intercepted calls.

Hadad tried to show that the link to Netanyahu was central to the operation. Citing the warrant, he pointed to its description of Eshel's contact with the main suspect, identified as a senior elected official, and argued that Eshel gave investigators a route to listening to Netanyahu. Tzviran rejected that reading, saying Eshel was a suspect in his own right and that the obstruction suspicion, for example, concerned him and not Netanyahu.

The questioning also revealed a wider disagreement over how precisely Mandelblit's authorizations defined the investigation. Asked whether he had approved inquiries into particular offenses, Mandelblit said he authorized subjects for investigation. He separated that from the specific offenses investigators name when warning a person before questioning them as a suspect.

Hadad later returned to the early stages of Case 1000, which involves expensive gifts Netanyahu allegedly received from wealthy businessmen. Netanyahu is charged with fraud and breach of trust in the case and denies wrongdoing. Hadad asked whether permission to examine an apartment linked to businessman James Packer covered investigating gifts from Arnon Milchan, suggesting investigators gathered evidence beyond what Mandelblit allowed. Mandelblit repeatedly said he did not remember the detailed instructions Hadad described, and did not recall investigators acting against such a restriction.

The exchange followed testimony last week on how the gifts inquiry developed. Mandelblit said then that accounts from Milchan's assistant, Hadas Klein, describing a regular supply of gifts changed his assessment of the evidence and justified a full criminal investigation. Hadad's questioning aims to reconstruct what investigators had already done before that point, testing the timing and scope of Mandelblit's consent against their accounts and the records of his instructions.