JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asked its president Sunday to pardon him in his long-running corruption trial, a request that the president called “extraordinary” and that critics said would run counter to the rule of law.
Netanyahu’s unusual preemptive appeal to President Isaac Herzog, while his trial is still underway, came about two weeks after President Donald Trump sent a letter to Herzog urging him to pardon the Israeli prime minister.
A statement by the Israeli president’s office said the request would have “significant implications,” and that he would “responsibly and sincerely consider” it after seeking expert opinions.
Netanyahu said he believed that canceling his trial would help heal the divisions in Israeli society. But the immediate effect of the request appeared to amplify the rifts that have intensified over two years of war and his long battle with the judiciary.
Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in connection with three separate, but interlocking cases, and he has been on trial for five years. He has denied any wrongdoing in the cases, which center on accusations that he arranged favors for tycoons in exchange for gifts and sympathetic media coverage for himself and his family.
Soon after his request to the president was made public, Netanyahu explained his reasoning in a video statement. He said that he would have preferred to prove his innocence in court, but that the national interest demanded otherwise.
Citing Israel’s “security and political reality,” he called the requirement that he appear in court to testify three times a week “an impossible demand,” and he referred to Trump’s equally extraordinary interventions on his behalf as justification for seeking a pardon.
Israeli legal experts said such a request by a sitting Israeli prime minister was without precedent and subverted the principle of equality before the law, a cornerstone of Israeli democracy.
Netanyahu said he believed that ending his trial would help foster national unity at a time when Israel urgently needs it, after two years of war.
But the request for clemency, like the graft trial itself, is more likely to prove divisive before national elections scheduled to be held by late October. By law, Netanyahu may run in the next election as long has he has not been convicted after exhausting an appeals process.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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