PM’s chief of staff questioned on suspicion of forgery, illegal altering of records
Braverman suspected of changing timestamps on PM’s phone transcripts on morning of Oct. 7 Hamas attack; main suspect in IDF document leak case to be released to house arrest
Tzachi Braverman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff, is suspected of forgery and fraud over the illegal altering of records in the Prime Minister’s Office, it was confirmed on Thursday, after a court lifted a gag order on the affair.
Braverman was questioned by police for over five hours on Thursday afternoon and evening.
Braverman is suspected of having altered the stated time at which Netanyahu first received an update on the October 7 Hamas invasion via phone call from his military secretary at the time, Maj. Gen. Avi Gil, allegedly changing it from 6:40 a.m. to 6:29 a.m.
Channel 12 reported on Thursday evening that Braverman allegedly first attempted to persuade a stenographer to change the time written in the transcript, insisting that it was incorrectly stated as 6:40 a.m., but she refused, and he then changed it himself.
According to the Haaretz daily, Gil had phoned Netanyahu at 6:29 a.m., as the Hamas attack began, but Netanyahu did not give any instructions and instead told him to phone again in ten minutes, at 6:40 a.m. It was only during the second phone call — which Braverman allegedly altered to appear as though it was the first — that Netanyahu ordered Gil to hold a situational assessment regarding the developing Hamas invasion in southern Israel, Haaretz stated.
The investigation into the allegations was opened after Gil reported his suspicions on the matter to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara shortly before his tenure came to an end in May of this year.
Baharav-Miara then alerted the Israel Police’s Lahav 433 major crimes unit, which opened an investigation into suspected forgery by a public official.
Braverman was questioned Thursday by Lahav 433 on suspicion of altering the documents.
According to reports, PMO director-general Yossi Shelley also gave evidence to police on Thursday regarding the ongoing investigation. Shelley is not under caution and is not a suspect in the case.
In addition to the suspected forgery, Channel 12 reported that Gil had also alerted the attorney general to two separate matters of concern.
According to the report, Gil informed Baharav-Miara that Braverman had asked various PMO officials to provide him with transcripts of security meetings held by the Bennett-Lapid government in 2021, as well as transcripts of meetings held by Netanyahu during his previous terms in office.
It was unclear for what purpose Braverman had sought the documents, as he did not pass them on to Netanyahu, the report added, and only returned them after the attorney general issued a reminder about who is and isn’t permitted to retain sensitive documents.
The final matter on which Gil sounded the alarm dealt with allegations that Braverman blackmailed an IDF officer to alter the protocols of government meetings related to October 7, by threatening to release sensitive footage of the officer that he had acquired from PMO security cameras. Details of the alleged blackmail were first reported by Kan earlier this week.
However, according to Hebrew media reports, police have now ruled out the possibility that Braverman blackmailed anyone, and concluded, following an investigation, that the allegation was unfounded.
Netanyahu’s office firmly denied the allegations of Braverman’s misconduct, calling them “another complete fabrication that is also part of an unprecedented media witch hunt against the Prime Minister’s Office during wartime, designed to whitewash the grave failures of others on the night of October 7.”
Braverman, too, has strongly denied the allegations, calling them “severe slander” and “wild incitement,” and threatened to sue Kan if it did not retract the allegations and issue a public apology after the network named him on Sunday in connection with the blackmail case. Kan stood by its reporting.
Also on Thursday, a judge ruled that Eli Feldstein, a spokesman who worked with Netanyahu and a suspect in an investigation into a separate security affair in the PMO, will be released to house arrest almost three weeks after he was arrested.
Feldstein, the central suspect in the PMO security documents leak scandal, will be freed to house arrest Friday afternoon, the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court ruled. The police and Shin Bet can seek to appeal the decision.
He is suspected of having worked with four intelligence soldiers to steal top-secret intelligence material from the IDF and leak some of it to foreign media. One such document was allegedly leaked by Feldstein to Germany’s Bild in a distorted manner, dovetailing with the premier’s talking points against a hostage deal with Hamas.
Feldstein was arrested on October 27 on suspicion that he leaked sensitive security documents to the foreign press.
Two of the other four suspects, all of whom are IDF personnel, are also still in detention on suspicion of unlawfully removing security documents from an IDF database. The other two have been released to house arrests. None of the four has been named.
Netanyahu’s office has alleged that Feldstein was pressured into accusing the prime minister of crimes and that he was kept in detention without cause.
“We are greatly pained that they are destroying the lives of young men with baseless claims in order to harm right-wing governance,” the PMO said in a statement earlier this week. “In a democratic government, people are not detained for 20 days in a basement because of a leak while being prevented from meeting a lawyer for days on end, just in order to extract from them false claims against the prime minister.”
Netanyahu is not a suspect in any of the investigations.
