A mix of GPS cellphone location data as well as data from the Prime Minister’s Office security clearance records may demonstrate that a key prosecution witness could not have met with former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the time that the prosecution said a critical meeting took place.
The revelation may be the single most important victory to date by the defense in undermining aspects of the prosecution’s narrative in the public corruption trial.
According to GPS data presented by Netanyahu defense lawyer Boaz Ben Tzur in Jerusalem District Court on Wednesday, former top Netanyahu aide Shlomo Filber was at a family celebration and a business meeting at the time when the prosecution has argued he was having a key meeting with Netanyahu over the alleged media bribery scheme.
In addition, the defense presented documents from the PMO security clearance records indicating that Filber, who was then Communications Ministry director-general, did not visit the Prime Minister’s Office during the first week of June 2015.
In fact, according to these records, Filber’s first visit to the Prime Minister’s Office in the month of June 2015 was on June 15.
Netanyahu’s defense lawyers argued that this proves that the June 2015 meeting, in which Netanyahu gave Filber the order to assist with the Bezeq regulatory aspects of the Case 4000 Bezeq-Walla Affair, never happened.
When confronted with this new data, Filber back-pedaled saying that when he testified that the early June 2015 meeting did happen, he had assessed the date indirectly, based on an analysis of other meetings he had later in June, not on a direct memory of the date itself.
Even if, based on this evidence, the defense cannot prove that Netanyahu never gave Filber an instruction to assist with the media bribery scheme, proving that the meeting did not happen until June 15 could radically change how the court will view Filber’s other meetings.
The prosecution has said that all other meetings Filber had that June should be viewed in light of the orders Netanyahu had given his former top aide.
The prosecution maintains that Netanyahu and Filber met in late May and several times in June, so the exact date of Netanyahu’s order to assist with the alleged media bribery scheme is not critical. The judges can still accept Filber’s admission that he was given such an order.
In another key moment on Wednesday, Filber engaged with judges Rivkah Friedman Feldman and Moshe Bar Am over whether he has lied at different points in the case.
The judges confronted him over contradictions in versions of his key meeting with Netanyahu, which he gave to the Securities Exchange Commission investigators in 2017 and to police after he became a state’s witness in 2018.
Filber has insisted that he did not lie in either version. He simply remembered the meeting with Netanyahu differently based on the kinds of questions asked in 2017 and questions he was being asked in more detail in 2018.