Former IDF chief of staff, Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Herzi Halevi was summoned on Wednesday to testify in an investigation into suspected obstruction of an IDF probe into the leak of a classified document to Bild, according to police and court statements.
Halevi, who ordered the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division to investigate the leak and brought the Shin Bet into the picture, is expected to detail how the original inquiry was launched and handled.
According to the suspicion outlined by police in court, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, interfered with the military probe by meeting Eli Feldstein in the Kirya parking lot, presenting a list of names, and telling him he could “switch off the investigation.”
Police also told the court they had sought a warrant for the raw footage of journalist Omri Assenheim’s interview with Feldstein, which was aired on Kan 11.
A hearing held earlier Wednesday in the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court addressed appeals by Braverman and Netanyahu spokesman Omer Mansour against orders barring them from the Prime Minister’s Office. Police said Feldstein was questioned under caution on Sunday as part of the obstruction-of-justice probe concerning the late-night meeting with Braverman.
Court President Mizrahi pressed the police on the sequence of steps, asking why Feldstein was not immediately questioned under caution after the TV interview and why Braverman was detained before Feldstein was re-questioned.
“You moved to raid based on a television version,” Mizrahi told police, noting he issued a warrant Wednesday morning to obtain the interview’s raw materials.
At the same court session, which the two aides did not attend, police described “a new, additional case” at a preliminary stage, involving the prime minister’s chief of staff on suspicion of obstruction. Investigators said the new episode, the late-night parking-lot meeting, justifies continued no-contact restrictions between Netanyahu’s staff and other figures already tied to the affair.
Police argued that Braverman tried to shut down the IDF investigation that culminated in Bild’s publication of the classified document, a matter for which a statement of suspicions had previously been filed against Netanyahu aide Yonatan Urich.
Many senior PMO figures under suspicion of obstruction
They added that “all this is occurring among the most senior figures in the Prime Minister’s Office,” while noting that Feldstein himself publicly drew the prime minister into the controversy in his TV interview.
Mizrahi criticized the decision to question Mansour under caution after Feldstein said Mansour took the phones of Braverman and Feldstein as they sat in a car during the late-night meeting.
“Assuming everything Feldstein claims is true, what is the suspicion against Mansour? How would he know what was happening? Mansour is the glove compartment,” the judge said, suggesting a minimal role.
A police representative stated that there was concrete suspicion of Mansour's willful blindness regarding what transpired at the meeting. Mizrahi pressed again: “What offense did he commit? I would not have questioned him under caution. It is like arriving at a meeting and asking my legal aide to hold my phone.”