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Middle East|U.S. Ambassador to Israel Visits Netanyahu’s Corruption Trial
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/world/middleeast/mike-huckabee-ambassador-netanyahu-trial-israel.html
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A highly unusual appearance from Mike Huckabee comes as President Trump has called for the long-running legal case to be suspended.
July 16, 2025, 9:22 a.m. ET
Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, made a highly unusual appearance at the corruption trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, the latest sign of the Trump administration’s public support for Mr. Netanyahu in a long-running case.
Israeli prosecutors have indicted Mr. Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He has dealt with the legal challenge as Israel has waged wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran since the Hamas-led attack on the country on Oct. 7, 2023.
It is unusual for ambassadors to place themselves directly in a country’s legal issue. Mr. Huckabee’s appearance occurred after President Trump, who has been convicted in a number of cases, called for Mr. Netanyahu’s trial to be suspended.
Before he went to the courthouse, Mr. Huckabee said at a conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday that his visit was “an act of friendship,” to signal that “we want Israel to be successful.” He accused the judges overseeing Mr. Netanyahu’s trial of being biased, and he compared the Israeli leader to Mr. Trump, who was convicted of falsifying business records to conceal a sex scandal in 2024. Mr. Trump has declared the verdict against him a “disgrace.”
Of the Israeli case, Mr. Huckabee said, “It’s an unprecedented thing that in the midst of holding office, during an incredibly tense time, that you would spend a lot of your time — as our president had to do — sitting in a courtroom, often before judges who are totally unfair.”
Mr. Trump’s call for the trial to end was also rare: a direct intervention by an American president in judicial proceedings against an allied leader. He labeled the trial a “Witch Hunt against their Great War Time Prime Minister” last month on social media.
