“The attorney general’s people are listening to us closely,” a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal defense team said on Thursday.
Speaking to the media going into the second day of Netanyahu’s pre-indictment hearing, attorney Yossi Ashkenazi said that the defense team had “presented documents that weren’t part of the materials in the investigation.”
The defense team was “happy” at the attention being paid to their arguments, said Ashkenazi, but much work still remains.
“We argued for 11 hours in the hearing yesterday. I think we’ll need a similar amount of time today,” he said.
Wednesday’s hearing, like Thursday’s, is devoted to Case 4000, in which Netanyahu faces the most serious potential charge: bribery.
Case 4000 centers around suspicions that Netanyahu, when serving as communications minister, gave the Bezeq telecom giant enormous financial benefits in exchange for favorable coverage of him and his family on the Bezeq-owned Walla news site.
After Wednesday’s hearing, Netanyahu’s defense team issued a statement in which they announced: “We have laid out very detailed materials that are supported by considerable evidence that contradicts what the list of possible indictment counts claims. The attorney general listened to us. We hope and believe that nothing will remain of those counts, and the cases will be closed.”
A message sent out on behalf of Netanyahu said, “The prime minister’s attorneys, who prepared their answers for the hearing very thoroughly, made a series of arguments supported by considerable evidence, some new.”
This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.
