Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara plans to file charges against Jonatan Urich, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused of leaking sensitive documents to a German tabloid in a bid to sway Israeli public opinion against a hostage deal with the Hamas terror group, her office said Thursday.

Urich, who is no longer officially employed by the Prime Minister’s Office but continues to frequent the location and work with Netanyahu, will face charges of transmitting classified information with the intention of harming state security, possession of classified information, and destruction of evidence, the Attorney General’s Office said.

The charges relate to Urich’s role in the leak of a classified document from IDF military intelligence to the Bild newspaper in September 2024 as part of an effort to buttress Netanyahu’s claim that it was Hamas, not the prime minister, that was holding up a deal for the release of the hostages held by the terror group in Gaza. The document was allegedly leaked to a foreign news outlet in order to bypass Israel’s military censor.

The leak occurred in August 2024, several days after six hostages were murdered by the terror group.

“The release of the secret information by Urich and [fellow Netanyahu  aide Eli] Feldstein was intended, among other things, to influence public opinion regarding the prime minister and to skew the discourse at the time regarding the murder of the six hostages in August 2024,” the Attorney General’s Office stated.

On his X account, Urich jabbed sardonically at the gravity of the charges against him, posting “It’s quite something that the attorney general refrained from seeking a death sentence.”

Urich’s lawyers, Amit Hadad and Noa Milstein, said in a statement that the decision to file charges is “erroneous and disconnected from evidence that refutes the prosecution’s thesis and thoroughly shatters the claims against Urich.”

“Urich never held or transferred secret information, and certainly not to harm state security,” they said, and declared that........

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