PM’s chief of staff said facing suspension, imperiling appointment as envoy to UK

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s beleaguered chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, has reportedly been summoned to a hearing at the Civil Service Commission, which is seeking to suspend him amid an ongoing police investigation into his allegedly illicit conduct

Braverman is accused of having told a fellow aide to Netanyahu that he could obstruct an IDF probe into the leak of classified documents by the Prime Minister’s Office to the Bild German tabloid in 2024.

The police investigation into Braverman focuses on an alleged overnight meeting he set up in the parking lot of the IDF’s Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv with Netanyahu’s then-spokesperson Eli Feldstein. During the meeting, Feldstein said, the chief of staff told him that he was aware of what should have been a secret IDF investigation into Feldstein’s leak of classified intelligence, which he could make go away if he wanted.

According to Monday Channel 13 report, the State Prosecutor’s Office is recommending that Braverman — who has become one of Netanyahu’s closest confidants in recent years — be suspended for six months. The Civil Service Commission has ordered Braverman to submit a response to the panel by Sunday justifying his conduct.

Should the suspension move ahead, Channel 13 said it will be highly unlikely that Braverman will be able to take up his post as the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom. The cabinet approved his appointment in September. The police investigation was launched three months later.

Last month, a court placed a gag order on the case. The order, which is valid until February 22, covers all future investigative materials and any information that could expose methods or capabilities of the Shin Bet domestic security service. The sweeping gag order was issued after police appealed a lower court ruling that had granted a more limited order.

Braverman was temporarily barred from the Prime Minister’s Office due to the investigation and was also prohibited from talking to a list of people connected to the investigation.

Netanyahu has stood by Braverman, decrying the allegations against him as “one gigantic fake” last month. Netanyahu may be questioned in the probe as well, Hebrew media has reported.

“Forget it. It’s fake,” the prime minister said at a press conference, adding that the investigation is part of a broader trend, where “time after time after time they did this to senior figures in the state. And in the end it came out completely baseless,” in an apparent reference to the judicial system.