{"id":19955,"date":"2024-06-04T12:47:20","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T12:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/04\/netanyahu-and-trump-face-similar-politicized-prosecutions-legal-expert-says\/"},"modified":"2024-06-04T12:47:20","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T12:47:20","slug":"netanyahu-and-trump-face-similar-politicized-prosecutions-legal-expert-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/04\/netanyahu-and-trump-face-similar-politicized-prosecutions-legal-expert-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu and Trump face similar \u2018politicized prosecutions,\u2019 legal expert says"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

JERUSALEM \u2013 After a Manhattan jury on Thursday convicted former President Trump of falsifying business records, legal experts have commented on the similarities between his case and the ongoing prosecution of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s then-attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, charged Netanyahu with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a legal saga that started four years ago and is still unfolding. Netanyahu has flatly denied all the accusations against him.<\/p>\n

Fox News Digital reached out to leading legal experts who are well versed in the hard-charging and no-holds-barred electoral and judicial systems in both democracies.<\/p>\n

Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School and a scholar at the Kohelet Policy Forum, a Jerusalem think\u00a0tank, told Fox News Digital, \u2018Israel has always been the canary in the coalmine for threats to freedom and Western democracy. The politicized prosecutions on obscure and incomprehensible charges and victimless crimes that has been used on President Trump greatly resemble the prosecutions of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Israel\u2019s situation is worse \u2013 Netanyahu was indicted four years ago after years-long investigations, making the prosecution a never-ending shadow on his political career.\u2019<\/p>\n

He added \u2018Moreover, in Israel, prosecutors are not elected or even politically appointed, so there is not even the bitter consolation that both sides can play the same game.\u2019<\/p>\n

He continued, \u2018But in what\u00a0could be a good omen for Trump, Netanyahu\u2019s political opponents\u00a0thought the multiple criminal proceedings would end his political career, but instead he has gone on to win multiple elections because voters stopped taking the prosecutions seriously.\u2019<\/p>\n

Modern politics is filled with examples of court systems turned into blunt instruments to railroad politicians and dissidents who upset political parties and opponents.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most famous recent case is authoritarian Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s imprisonment of his most potent political rival,\u00a0Alexei Navalny, who was found dead in an Arctic penal colony in February. Putin\u2019s critics claimed he was behind the killing. Russia\u2019s opaque judiciary sentenced Navalny to a 19-year term for extremism. His defenders say he was persecuted by Putin because he was the first politician to build a national Russian opposition movement that seeks to end Putin\u2019s more than two decades of control over Russia.<\/p>\n

In 2023, the late-Italian Prime Minister Silvio\u00a0Berlusconi was found not guilty of witness tampering in connection with alleged sex parties, called \u2018bunga bunga,,\u2019 at his villa in Milan. He claimed that his political enemies manufactured the sex scandal allegations.<\/p>\n

The controversial\u00a0Italian politician died last year. He referred to himself as the \u2018Jesus Christ of politics.\u2019 In 2013, however, Italy\u2019s high court affirmed a conviction for tax fraud against Berlusconi.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted as the country\u2019s leader in 2022 and sentenced to\u00a0multiple prison terms for corruption, including leaking state secrets. Khan argues that the cases against him are politically motivated and his supporters have filled the streets of the Southeast Asian country to protest his incarceration.<\/p>\n

Khan, a former cricket star who became an Islamist politician, is now facing 170 pending legal cases against him. The charges include terrorism, incitement to violence and graft. In March 2022, Khan claimed at a rally that a foreign conspiracy was working against him. He said a document showed that \u2018all will be forgiven if Imran Khan is removed from power.\u2019 A month later, Khan was dislodged as prime minister by a no-confidence vote in the parliament.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

America\u2019s former ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who is a lawyer, told Fox News Digital,\u00a0\u2018The most important feature of a functioning democracy is its ability to instill confidence in the fairness of its judiciary. In the Trump case, the prosecution and the court have pursued a frivolous case and done enormous damage to our democracy. I am less familiar with the prime minister\u2019s issues, but it is clear that in Israel there also exists a significant part of the population that is losing confidence in the judiciary.\u2019<\/p>\n

Friedman, who served during the Trump administration and played a key role in relocating the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel\u2019s capital, Jerusalem, added, \u2018This is always a byproduct of prosecuting political opponents. When done, the facts and the law must be compelling and even overwhelming.\u00a0That\u2019s clearly not present in either case.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM \u2013 After a Manhattan jury on Thursday convicted former President Trump of falsifying business records, legal experts have commented on the similarities between his case and the ongoing prosecution of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel\u2019s then-attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, charged Netanyahu with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a legal saga <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":19956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}