Israeli President Yitzchak Herzog met secretly with Yaakov Bardougo, a commentator and close associate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to discuss options for ending the prime minister’s ongoing corruption trial — including a possible pardon — according to a report aired Thursday on Israel’s Channel 12.

The report comes as Herzog has effectively rejected the pardon, defying months of mounting pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to grant Netanyahu immediate clemency.
Herzog has decided to shelve Netanyahu’s pardon request, preferring to press both sides toward a negotiated plea agreement that would end the case.

According to senior Israeli officials with direct knowledge of his thinking, Herzog believes there are options beyond the binary pardon-or-no-pardon choice, and that his primary role as president is to foster national unity.

For now, those officials said, he will not say yes or no to the pardon request.

The decision to hold off amounts to a direct rebuff of Trump, who has waged an unusually aggressive campaign to intervene in Israel’s domestic legal affairs. Trump told Axios in March that he speaks with Netanyahu every day about the war and wants the prime minister focused solely on the fighting against Iran. “I want the only pressure on Bibi to be the fighting against Iran,” Trump said, demanding that Herzog grant the pardon immediately and calling the Israeli president “a disgrace” for failing to act.

Trump dismissed the underlying charges — which involve allegations that Netanyahu received hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts from billionaires in exchange for political favors — saying Netanyahu “should not be on trial over wine and cigars” and that he is a wartime prime minister who “should not be in jail.”

As recently as last week, Trump told Axios that Netanyahu had raised his corruption trial during a phone call between the two leaders, telling him he would be back in court instead of focusing on Iran. “In the middle of a war? Give me a break,” Trump said.

Herzog has not budged. Both the Justice Ministry’s Pardons Department and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara have advised against granting the pardon on the basis of the current request. Proceeding against those legal recommendations would have risked intervention by the High Court of Justice and potential damage to the presidency as an institution.

The Pardons Department issued a detailed opinion in March stating there is no legal basis for a pardon without an admission of guilt or conviction — a condition Netanyahu, who insists he is the victim of a political witch hunt, has shown no willingness to meet.

It is against that backdrop that Thursday’s Channel 12 report takes on added significance. According to the report, the secret Shoham meeting was arranged only after weeks of sharp public attacks by Bardougo against Herzog.

Bardougo had called the president unfit for his office, accused him of harming state security by refusing to pardon Netanyahu, and suggested he was being manipulated by left-wing elements. Despite the acrimony, representatives of the president’s office moved to arrange the meeting, with mutual acquaintance Yoram Marciano serving as intermediary.

At the gathering — attended by Herzog, his director-general, and Bardougo — those present discussed the possibility of a pardon as well as other alternatives for concluding the prime minister’s legal proceedings.

According to the report, Herzog told Bardougo at the conclusion of the meeting that he intended to actively advance a plea agreement and offered to invite both sides to the president’s residence to reach a swift resolution. Roughly a month later, Herzog made a public call for plea negotiations — but without disclosing the prior understandings reached with Netanyahu’s associate, or the behind-the-scenes pressure that preceded it.

Herzog’s office pushed back firmly on the Channel 12 account, insisting the Shoham meeting was a routine background conversation with a journalist, of a kind the president holds periodically with media figures across the political spectrum. “The meeting in question was a general background conversation only, as part of meetings of this type, and no agreement, promise, or concrete discussion regarding a pardon took place,” the statement read.

“Contrary to the claims, the president did not reach any understandings with Bardougo — not on the matter of a pardon, and not on any other matter.”

The office added that Bardougo “was not involved directly or indirectly” in the president’s mediation efforts — efforts which, it noted, Bardougo is known to oppose. Herzog’s office has consistently maintained that the president will examine any pardon request “in accordance with the law, the best interests of the state, and his conscience, and without any influence from external or internal pressures of any kind.”