The office that Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara was using - and that Justice Minister Yariv Levin ordered that the locks be switched for last week - belongs to the Justice Ministry and not the Attorney-General's Office, Levin insisted in his response to the High Court of Justice on the matter on Sunday.
Last week, Baharav-Miara and staff from the office arrived at the office to find the locks changed. Levin only later confirmed that he was behind the instruction, confirming previous reports.
“The locks on the minister's office in Tel Aviv were indeed changed, but it is the minister's office and not of Gali Baharav-Miara's. Her attempt to make unauthorized use of the minister's office is another example of puzzling behavior on the part of someone who has already been removed from her position,” Levin's office said at the time. Both offices are located in the Justice Ministry's offices in the government building in Tel Aviv.
Yariv Levin: It was my office, not the attorney-general's
On Sunday, he argued that the Attorney-General's Office tried to portray the issue as though it was a random office belonging to the ministry, but that really it belongs directly to the justice minister.
Levin referenced the Pegasus spyware affair from 2023, when the government decided to set up an investigative committee to handle the incident.
He noted that “this was an essential issue of personal safety and citizens rights,” but an injunction by the court - prompted by the legal advisory - kept it from advancing.
The justice minister used this as an example of different times, he argued, when core issues were the top priority for the legal system - as opposed to now.
Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee chairman MK Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionist Party), who has led the fight against the judiciary along with Levin, added that the main message Levin tried to get across is the “improper use of the legal check on the government by the judiciary for their own purposes and gain.”
“They have a massive amount of power in their hands, and they use it, time and time again, in abandonment of issues of citizens rights or to be a check on public power, and instead to better their own positions,” he added.