Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu testified again Wednesday at the Tel Aviv District Court, with Transportation Minister Miri Regev attending to show support. During the hearing, Netanyahu indirectly referred to U.S. President Donald Trump’s official request that President Isaac Herzog grant him a pardon, saying: “World leaders are astonished, and I’m not exaggerating.”
Netanyahu made the comment during his cross-examination in Case 1000, also known as the “gifts affair,” in which attorney Yonatan Tadmor questioned him about gifts he received from businessmen Arnon Milchan and James Packer. Tadmor asked whether Netanyahu had informed his lawyer and cousin, David Shimron, about the cigars and champagne he accepted from the two.
“You’re trying to create a problem that doesn’t exist,” Netanyahu replied. “The absurdity was exposed, and then the world discovered it. All world leaders, none of them believe it.” When asked at the end of the hearing directly about Trump’s pardon request, Netanyahu chose not to respond.
On Tuesday, during a previous session of his cross-examination, Netanyahu clashed with Tadmor over the scale of gifts he allegedly received from Milchan and Packer, mainly cigars and champagne. Netanyahu insisted the sums were “tiny” and denied there was any “supply line” for cigars. “It wasn’t a truckload of cigars, not a van, not even a box,” he said. “These were given during social meetings, maybe two or three times a year, in minimal amounts.”
He also referred to one witness, Momi Meshulam, as “Mr. Momi the liar Meshulam,” prompting Judge Rivka Feldman-Friedman to ask him to maintain proper decorum.
During the hearing, prosecutor Tadmor also questioned Netanyahu about his wife Sara’s consumption of champagne. “You don’t know how the champagne reaches your wife, but you do know that she drinks it?” he asked. “You said she can’t drink three bottles a day, but even by the indictment, it’s about one bottle a day, so the argument that she doesn’t weigh 300 kilos doesn’t hold.” Netanyahu responded angrily, “Three hundred fifty thousand shekels’ worth of champagne? Those are enormous amounts. You inflated it!”