New recordings reveal Mandelblit heavily lobbied bar association chief to get AG job
Leaked phone calls from 2015 show close and constant coordination between Mandelblit and Efi Nave to influence selection committee, High Court
Former attorney general Avichai Mandelblit worked closely behind the scenes to pressure the then-chairman of the Israel Bar Association to appoint him to the position, according to leaked recordings of phone calls between the two men released by Channel 12 news.
The TV station on Wednesday aired a number of those conversations from 2015, in which Mandelblit — at the time serving as cabinet secretary to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — was lobbying since-disgraced IBA chair Efi Nave to help him get the job.
According to the news outlet, during the period leading up to Mandelblit’s appointment to the job of attorney general, he and Nave spoke up to 12 times per day to discuss the ongoing selection process.
The selection committee for the job includes a retired judge, a former justice minister or attorney general, an MK, an outside legal expert, and a representative of the IBA. The committee hands a number of approved names to the justice minister, who picks one that the cabinet must approve in a vote.
The recordings focus largely on the activity of Yechiel Katz, the IBA lawyer selected by Nave to sit on the committee, with discussions over how Katz agreed with Nave and Mandelblit to support the latter for the job of attorney general, in part by sabotaging other candidates.
In one call, Nave could be heard telling Mandelblit that it would not be a good idea for him to attend Katz’s daughter’s wedding because “he really is working for you.” Mandelblit responded by praising both Nave and Katz.
Channel 12 reported 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.
According to the report, Mandelblit wanted the attorney general position, but feared he would be ruled out due to a potential conflict of interest since he was working as the cabinet secretary, and because he had been investigated as part of the “Harpaz Affair,” which touched on an earlier period when he served as military advocate general.
The police in 2016 cleared all those involved in the investigation of all charges.
Mandelblit was long seen as a close associate of Netanyahu, a fact that some critics used to oppose his nomination. The relationship between the two men later soured, after Mandelblit oversaw the indictment of Netanyahu on multiple charges of corruption during his tenure as attorney general.
Nave, meanwhile, resigned as IBA chairman in disgrace in 2019 after it emerged that he had used his position to illegally smuggle a woman out of the country — a crime he was later convicted of. 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.
Some members of the current government pointed to the leaked phone conversation as proof that the since-shelved judicial overhaul must be brought back to the public agenda.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin — the architect of the highly contentious overhaul plan — said the recordings prove that the justice system is in need of “deep change.”
“This is the face of the ‘rule of law’ that was led by the ‘gatekeepers,'” he said. “This is the type of rule of law that exists in a third world country — some people are allowed because they are on the right side, and some aren’t allowed because they’re not ‘one of us.'”
While the overhaul plan was largely shelved amid major public backlash, and later disappeared from public view after the October 7 Hamas attack and ongoing war, in recent weeks reports have emerged that Levin is seeking to revive the plan. The justice minister has also clashed with the Supreme Court over his ongoing refusal to appoint a new president of the court.
In one of the calls aired on Channel 12, Nave told Mandelblit that Katz was working hard to make sure all five committee members would be convinced to vote for him even though he would have got through with four votes.
“If there’s one person who knows your case in detail it’s [Katz] and [he knows it] better than [former Supreme Court justice Asher] Grunis,” another member of the committee. “He means to sit with every one of the committee members and explain to them [why they should vote for Mandelblit] and spoon-feed them. You couldn’t have asked for a better ambassador than him,” Nave said.
In other phone calls, Mandelblit was given inside information shared with Nave by Katz on the committee’s proceedings, while Mandelblit handed Nave further instructions to pass on to Katz.
In one call, Nave described how Katz sabotaged another candidate, then-deputy attorney-general Raz Nizri, by accusing him of framing Mandelblit in the Harpaz case and spending half of Nizri’s interview for the attorney-general position talking about Mandelblit.
Nave was also recorded preparing Mandelblit before he appeared before the committee. The two discussed how Mandelblit would assuage concerns that his close work with Netanyahu would pose a conflict of interest. At the end of the conversation, Nave also asked Mandelblit if there were any questions he wanted to pass on to Katz to be asked during his appearance.
The two could also be heard discussing concerns that due to changes in the government at the time, then-justice minister Ayelet Shaked, who supported Mandelblit, would be replaced.
“When you get a chance to speak to [Netanyahu], tell him to delay the reshuffling because it will do you serious damage… Shaked is dedicated to you… She loves you,” Nave said in one recording.
The committee eventually voted for Mandelblit unanimously and the government also approved him, but the Movement for the Quality of Government and the Ometz Movement petitioned the High Court to disqualify him.
The problem for Mandelblit was that the state attorney, who had opened the Harpaz affair investigation into him, was now set to defend him at the High Court hearing.
In recordings from the period before the hearing, Mandelblit could be heard assuring Nave that the state attorney would support him because he had made them understand that the alternative to him would be Guy Rotkopf, who had spent the last few years in various Justice Ministry positions and, according to Channel 12, was considered the justice system’s enemy.
While Mandelblit was convincing the state attorney to support him over Rotkopf, Nave could be heard telling him in one of the recordings that he was doing the same with High Court justices.
“Tomorrow at noon, I have a meeting with the chief justice and with [then-high court justices Yoram] Danziger and [Zvi] Zylbertal, and as an aside, I’ll start a lot of small talk and will, of course, raise the matter of the attorney general and will tell them about Plan B,” Nave said.
The High Court dismissed the petitions, and in a phone call after the hearing, Nave could be heard congratulating Mandelblit and referring to redheaded MQG chairman Eliad Shraga as “that ginger sh**.”
