Recordings of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit and Blue & White leader Gabi Ashkenazi discussing issues surrounding the Harpaz Affair in 2010 were aired by Channel 13 News on Sunday night. At the time Mandelblit was the IDF’s top legal officer and Ashkenazi was the IDF chief of staff.

The Harpaz Affair was the result of a conflict between then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak and then outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Ashkenazi about who would succeed Ashkenazi as IDF chief of staff.

The conflict led a former IDF intelligence officer, Boaz Harper, who was then a private defense adviser and close to Ashkenazi, to forge a document intended to undermine Yoav Galant, whom Ashkenazi opposed but was Barak’s first choice for the next IDF chief of staff.

Ashkenazi was given the document but didn’t immediately report it to the attorney general’s office. It’s believed that he told Mandelblit about the document, and Mandelblit also failed to immediately reveal the existence of the document to the authorities.

When the document was discovered to be forged, a criminal investigation was carried out against Harpaz. Suspicion was also cast on Ashkenazi and Mandelblit, with police investigators questioning them and eventually recommending in 2014 that Mandelblit be charged with obstruction and breach of trust. However, Attorney General Yehudah Weinstein closed the case against Mandelblit in May 2015.

The Channel 12 News report led Netanyahu supporters to repeat claims that Mandelblit’s corruption indictments against the prime minister are a conspiracy against him in a similar fashion to his alleged conspiracy with Ashkenazi against Galant.

In another claim against Mandelblit, the Betzalmo legal rights organization is demanding that the Justice Ministry investigate Mandelbit regarding dozens of leaks about the police investigations against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. A page from Mandelblit’s calendar reveals that he met with a Channel 13 legal affairs reporter, Aviad Glickman, who published the details of the indictments against Netanyahu that night.

“In December it was revealed that Mandelblit met 71 times with members of the media, but he has refused to indicate whom he met with,” a Betzalmo attorney stated. “After much effort, we have determined that one of those media figures was none other than Aviad Glickman, who nearly nightly presented specific quotes from transcripts of witnesses in the Netanyahu investigations, as well as supposedly secret details of the investigations.”

“It is not unreasonable to assume that Mandelblit leaked this information because of his involvement with other scandals, such as the Harpaz affair, investigation of which at least for now is in abeyance as long as Mandelblit serves the interests of those who pull the strings in the ‘deep state,'” the Betzalmo attorney concluded.

A spokesperson for Ashkenazi responded to the report by stating that the recordings are not new and they have been aired several times in the past and that all the suspicions against Ashkenazi have been examined and discredited and disproven.

Mandelblit responded that the suspicions against him were examined before he was appointed attorney general in 2014 by the search committee and the Supreme Court, which both concluded he had not transgressed any laws.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)