Levin tells High Court the office he locked AG out of is his private space

Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara submitted competing responses Sunday to a High Court of Justice petition against Levin’s move to block Baharav-Miara from using a shared office in Tel Aviv in the wake of the currently frozen government decision to fire her.

Levin told the court that the office that his driver changed the locks on last week was his own private office, while Baharav-Miara asserted that the space has been shared for at least a decade and that the sudden change was aimed at hindering her work and violated an earlier ruling.

The office in Tel Aviv has been shared by the justice minister and attorney general for years, but on Tuesday last week, Baharav-Miara arrived to find that Levin’s driver had changed the locks to prevent her from entering.

The switch was Levin’s latest attempt to prevent Baharav-Miara from doing her job, after the government’s attempt to fire her via a specially formed committee — having failed to oust her using the existing legal mechanism — was frozen until further notice by the High Court.

The act had prompted an outpouring of condemnation and mockery from Levin’s political opponents, and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party — as well as the Movement for Quality Government watchdog — filed a petition with the High Court over the move the following day.

The court then asked Levin to respond to the accusations that he had violated a previous ruling against interference in Baharav-Miara’s work until the court announces whether her firing was legal.

In his letter defending the move on Sunday, Levin told the court that the complaints over the issue had “knowingly misled the court by trying to present the office as if it were a general office belonging to the Justice Ministry,” rather than the “minister’s office and his personal room.”

According to the Ynet news outlet, he submitted a photograph of the sign on the door to the office that marked it as “the office of the deputy prime minister and justice minister” and a copy of the building’s blueprints, dated 2009, to back up his argument.

The justice minister, who is a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, also criticized the court for getting involved, saying that “the fact that nine Supreme Court justices are required for this matter is something that will be studied as one of the strangest events in legal history.”

“There were days when issues at the core of civil rights were at the top of the court’s priorities, but these are different days,” Levin mused.

He further castigated Baharav-Miara, claiming that the country’s resources were being used for her “personal interests” while being kept from the government.

“It would be the right thing for the court to restore order in such a way that the resources of the State Attorney, which are financed by public funds, are immediately placed at the government’s disposal rather than being used against it,” he declared.

In her own filing, Baharav-Miara didn’t dispute that the office was formally that of the justice minister, but said the custom over at least the past decade has been for the attorney general’s staff to use the office on the days of the week when the justice minister’s staff doesn’t work from there.

She argued that the decision to halt that arrangement was unilateral and made with a direct link to the cabinet decision to fire her, adding: “The incident violates orders issued by the court, specifically the instruction not to alter the existing working relationship. It appears that the purpose is an attempt to harm the status of the attorney general and her professional work.”

Levin had ordered the locks on the office door changed after his driver initially called Baharav-Miara’s staff and instructed them not to use the Tel Aviv office that she shares with Levin, Zman Yisrael, the Hebrew-language sister site of The Times of Israel, reported last week.

After they refused to adhere to the demand, Levin’s driver was dispatched to change the locks, leaving the attorney general’s staff unable to enter their place of work.