High Court brushes off AG’s concern over Gofman meetings with Mossad official |
A legal storm blew up on Thursday over concerns raised by the Attorney General’s Office over a meeting held by incoming Mossad chief Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman and a current official in the Mossad which legal officials claimed was relevant to the High Court petitions against Gofman’s appointment.
The Attorney General’s Office filed a notice to the court Thursday morning informing it of two meetings Gofman held with officials in the Mossad after his appointment as the next head of the spy agency was approved, which the legal officials said Gofman should have told the court in the framework of the petitions against him.
The court quickly dismissed the attorney general’s concerns, saying the meetings, and what was discussed in them, had no relevance or influence on the petitions before the court — or its decisions thus far in the legal proceedings.
After the court brushed aside the attorney general’s concerns, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, through his attorney, accused Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara of stirring up an “uproar over nothing,” and alleged that she was trying to stymie the appointment on baseless grounds.
Netanyahu demanded that the Attorney General’s Office be excluded from one of the legal processes the High Court ordered following a hearing on the petitions against Gofman on Tuesday.
Gofman was appointed as the next head of the Mossad in April this year, but several petitions were filed against him, including one by a 17-year old blogger whom Gofman had authorized to publish classified information in a social media influence campaign while he was serving as the commander of the IDF’s 210th Division.
The blogger, Ori Elmakayes, was........