Do the State Attorney's Office hide information from Netanyahu's lawyers? | Israel today

The State Attorney's Office informed the Supreme Court and the Prime Minister's defense attorneys that they had "accidentally" attached a document stating that recordings of Ilan Yeshua, one of the key witnesses in the 4000 case, had been restored.

Does the State Attorney's Office hide material information from Netanyahu's attorneys in the 4000 case?

This question arises in light of the State Attorney's Office's announcement yesterday to the Supreme Court and the Prime Minister's defense attorneys that it "accidentally" attached a memorandum regarding the restoration of deleted calls on the mobile device of Ilan Yeshua - former Walla website CEO and key figure in case 4000, The first to appear on the witness stand at the prime minister's trial.

These are conversations of Yeshua with key witnesses in the case - including state witness Nir Hefetz (the prime minister's communications adviser at the time) and Iris Elowitz, the wife of Walla Walla husband Shaul Elowitz, who is also on trial.

Advocate Boaz Ben-Tzur, the prime minister's attorney, asked to receive Yeshua's device, the recordings of which helped the prosecution formulate the indictment against Netanyahu, and their credibility will be one of the main points of contention in the prime minister's trial. The device was deleted and is not in the hands of the defense, Netanyahu's lawyers asked to try and restore these recordings in order to examine whether there are materials that were hidden from the phone and may provide a broader connection to the talks, thus possibly assisting the prime minister.

On Tuesday, the State Attorney's Office's first response was submitted to the court, signed by Naomi Granot (Deputy Director of the Economic Department of the State Attorney's Office), in which it was alleged that the attempts to extract the talks were futile.

Granot referred in her announcement to a memorandum from the Securities Authority - the body that was entrusted with examining the instrument of salvation.

Surprisingly, the contents of the memorandum contradicted the State Attorney's Office's announcement, stating that the reconstruction attempt was actually a partial success: , Forensics and analytics at the Securities Authority, which, as stated, conducted the test on the instrument.

Attached to the memorandum is also a table detailing the list of conversations between Yeshua and Hefetz, Iris Alovich and others, as stated in the number 8, between the months of July 2015 and November 2016. These conversations can shed new light on the recordings that appear in the file.

In other words, the State Attorney's Office's announcement that no talks had been restored is in complete contradiction to the memorandum it attached, and which was supposed to support its position.

Yesterday there was a turn in the plot: the prosecution asked the court to 'correct' its response, with a new memorandum, which is in complete contradiction to the previous memorandum.

This time, it was determined that the reconstruction of the talks actually failed, according to the prosecutor's office's version on the subject.

This memorandum was also signed by Lauren, the relevant expert from the Securities Authority.

According to the prosecution, the previous memorandum "was attached by mistake and its contents do not describe the state of affairs as the final computer tests have revealed."

The prosecution added that "although, along the way, it seemed that 8 deleted files could be recovered, but after further examination it became clear that these are files that have not been deleted and are in fact in the investigation material that was transferred to you."

That did not end the story.

In response to the State Attorney's Office's response, Netanyahu's attorneys asked for the relevant references in the investigation material for those talks, but the State Attorney's Office refused to cooperate: "These attempts have raised eyebrows," the prime minister's defense attorneys told the Supreme Court.

Instead, the prosecution returned a particularly convoluted answer: "The system mistakenly belonged to existing files that were never deleted to file names from another date and between other deleted speakers."

This means that those eight reconstructed calls, according to the first memorandum, will not be forwarded to Netanyahu's attorneys, since from the State Attorney 's Office these conversations do not exist at all.

In light of this, Netanyahu's attorneys are asking the court to order the prosecution to hand over Yeshua's cellphone, for examination by an expert on behalf of the prime minister's defense attorneys, who will try to recreate the deleted conversations himself.

The State Attorney's Office's response will be provided when received