Court rejects attempt by former AG to gag leaked tapes of calls with top lawyer

Former attorney general Avichai Mandelblit has failed to convince a court to order the squelching of leaked phone conversations aired by Channel 12 in which he can be heard lobbying the head of the Israel Bar Association to help him land the attorney general job.

Tel Aviv District Court rejects a suit filed by Mandelblit seeking a ruling that Channel 12 broke a gag order by airing recordings of his calls with ex-bar chief Efi Nave, and suppressing any other material from Nave’s phone the channel might have.

Nave resigned in disgrace as head of the bar in 2019 after it emerged that he had used his position to illegally smuggle a woman out of the country. Several months later, he was arrested on suspicion that he had sought sexual favors in exchange for judicial appointments, although charges were never filed in the case.

Channel 12 reported yesterday that Nave approved the news outlet’s airing the recordings of the conversations, which were found on a flash drive during a search of Nave’s office earlier this year as part of an investigation into a separate case.

In his suit, Mandelblit notes he attempted to file for an injunction before the recordings were aired yesterday, but was given little time to do so and was rejected by the Magistrate’s Court.

Meanwhile, the Judicial Authority denies a key part of the exposé which claimed Nave passed messages to the justices on the High Court of Justice to the effect that they should not rule against Mandelblit’s appointment, since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s preferred candidate was antagonistic to the legal establishment.

“We wish to clarify that there is no truth to the report according to which messages were passed to the justices on the panel deliberating on the appointment of Avichai Mandelblit to [the position of] attorney general, and the claim that these messages influenced their ruling. This never happened,” the Judicial Authority says in a statement to the press.