Trump sends letter to Israeli president asking him to pardon Netanyahu over corruption charges

President Donald Trump sent an official letter to Israeli President Isaac Herzog on November 12, 2025, calling on Herzog to fully pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his ongoing corruption trial. The letter was released publicly by the Israeli President's office the same day. Trump wrote that he 'hereby call[s] on you to fully pardon Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been a formidable and decisive War Time Prime Minister.'

In the letter, Trump characterized the charges against Netanyahu as 'a political, unjustified prosecution,' writing: 'While I absolutely respect the independence of the Israeli Justice System, and its requirements, I believe that the case against Bibi, who has fought alongside me for a long time, including against the very tough adversary of Israel, Iran, is a political, unjustified prosecution.' Trump also framed the pardon as necessary for regional diplomacy, writing that Netanyahu's 'attention cannot be unnecessarily diverted' by the trial.

Netanyahu faces three separate criminal cases in Israeli courts, collectively known as Cases 1000, 2000, and 4000. Case 1000 involves allegations that Netanyahu accepted gifts worth more than $200,000 from wealthy businessmen in exchange for governmental assistance. Case 2000 involves alleged negotiations with a newspaper publisher for favorable coverage in exchange for regulatory favors. Case 4000, the most serious, involves the communications conglomerate Bezeq, where Netanyahu allegedly granted regulatory changes worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Shaul Elovitch's business in exchange for positive coverage on Elovitch's news website, Walla!

In Case 4000, Netanyahu faces charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, the most severe of the charges across all three cases. If convicted of bribery, he could face up to 10 years in prison. The trial in the Jerusalem District Court began on May 24, 2020. The prosecution rested in July 2024, and the defense began its case in December 2024.

The letter was procedurally improper under Israeli law from the moment it was sent. Under Israeli law, anyone seeking a presidential pardon must submit a request following established procedures, and the request must come from the individual accused, their legal representatives, or a family member. An unsolicited letter from a foreign head of state falls outside the formal pardon process.

Herzog's office acknowledged the letter and noted that any pardon request must follow Israeli legal procedures. At the time Trump sent the letter, Netanyahu had not submitted a formal pardon request of his own. Under Israeli law, a first condition for a presidential pardon is typically admitting guilt and expressing remorse, something Netanyahu had not done. The president does have authority to grant pardons on rare occasions before a conviction, if deemed to be in the public interest, but even pre-conviction pardons require formal procedures.

Herzog's response was a measured rejection of Trump's framing. Rather than accepting or declining the pardon request outright, Herzog's office pushed for new plea deal talks between Netanyahu and prosecutors instead of pursuing a pardon. Herzog signaled he would not consider a pardon at that stage, effectively declining to act on Trump's letter while avoiding a direct public confrontation with the U.S. president.

The general assessment in Israeli legal and presidential circles was that Herzog does have the theoretical authority to pardon Netanyahu even before a final conviction, but that exercising it in response to a foreign leader's letter would be constitutionally and politically untenable. Any such pardon would almost certainly be challenged at Israel's High Court of Justice and risked further polarizing an already deeply divided Israeli society.

Trump tied the pardon request explicitly to his Abraham Accords expansion agenda and the post-Gaza ceasefire diplomatic environment. In the letter, Trump wrote that after 'achieving these unprecedented successes, and are keeping Hamas in check, it is time to let Bibi unite Israel by pardoning him, and ending that lawfare once and for all.' This framing positioned the pardon as a prerequisite for continued Israeli diplomatic engagement with regional partners.

The Times of Israel reported that Trump's letter came shortly after a Gaza ceasefire agreement had taken effect, and that Trump was seeking to leverage the diplomatic momentum to benefit his ally Netanyahu. Observers noted that linking a domestic Israeli criminal trial to American foreign policy interests was itself an extraordinary assertion of influence over another country's judicial independence.

Legal scholars and former diplomats noted the letter represented an unusual intervention by a U.S. president in a foreign nation's independent judicial system. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that while foreign leaders have occasionally expressed concern about prosecutions of allied leaders, a formal written request to a head of state to exercise pardon power on behalf of a named defendant was without modern precedent in U.S. diplomatic practice.

The Al Jazeera English report on the letter noted that Trump's use of the term 'lawfare' to describe Netanyahu's prosecution mirrored language Trump himself had used about his own criminal charges in the United States, which were dropped after he won the 2024 presidential election. Critics argued the letter demonstrated a pattern of Trump using executive communications to advocate for allies facing criminal accountability, regardless of whether the legal system involved was American or foreign.

Netanyahu himself had not requested a pardon at the time of Trump's letter, and his legal team had not submitted the required formal petition. Netanyahu eventually submitted his own pardon request to Herzog in late November 2025, about two weeks after Trump's letter. The November 30 NPR report noted that Netanyahu's own request did not admit guilt, which raised additional legal questions about whether it met the standard conditions for a presidential pardon under Israeli law.

Herzog responded to Netanyahu's formal request by continuing to press for a negotiated plea agreement rather than a unilateral pardon. Israeli legal experts told local outlets that a pardon granted under these circumstances, without a plea, without admitted guilt, and after a public letter from a foreign head of state, would face an almost certain challenge before the High Court of Justice.

The letter fits a pattern Trump established during and after his own legal challenges. Trump had repeatedly described his own criminal indictments in the United States as 'election interference' and 'political persecution.' His Jerusalem Post interview and public statements after sending the letter made explicit parallels between his own legal experience and Netanyahu's, framing both as examples of political opposition weaponizing legal systems against democratic leaders.

The Hill reported that Trump described Netanyahu's trial as 'political lawfare' using the same term he and his allies used to describe the four criminal indictments Trump himself faced during the 2024 campaign. This rhetorical alignment between Trump's domestic legal narrative and his international advocacy for Netanyahu illustrated how the administration's approach to criminal accountability operated consistently: prosecutions of Trump allies are political, prosecutions of Trump opponents are legitimate.