Olmert's foot-dragging must stop
Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's sentencing hearing at the Jerusalem District Court Tuesday was devoid of any special significance. As the old song goes, it was just one of those run-of-the-mill days, business as usual. Olmert arrived; he stood up; he was told he would serve time; he went back home. Olmert's attorneys, Eyal Rozovsky and Eli Zohar, reiterated that same worn-out statement, that this was a "sad day."
Their sadness is a consequence of Olmert's former bureau chief, Shula Zaken, secretly recording her boss while talking about the cash he had received from American businessman Morris Talansky. Channel 2's Guy Peleg and Channel 10's Baruch Kra tried hard to have Olmert's defense team talk about what the three-judge panel had just done. But no, they just said it was a "sad day," ignoring the fact that the presiding judge, Judge Jacob Zaban, had just cast Olmert's conduct in the worst possible light, calling his actions a "black flag of immorality," a term dating from the 1950s, when it was used to describe illegal military orders that involved the deliberate killing of civilians.
Why are Olmert's attorneys feeling blue? Because Ehud cared for Shula, but she turned on him and pressed the "record" button. She did that to make sure she wouldn't go down with him. She used him as a flak jacket, as a precaution. So goes their narrative. But anyone following Olmert's legal travails could tell you that Zaken was initially offered a deal that would have kept the secret recordings inadmissible.
Only thanks to Judge David Rozen, who presided over Olmert's other trial (the Holyland trial), was that scenario averted. Rozen insisted that Zaken's plea bargain would include everything. As a result, the prosecutors pressured Zaken to agree to a modified deal, and only then were the eerie recordings made available. This is what led the judges to overturn the 2012 verdict in the Talansky affair and send Olmert to prison. The bottom line is that Zaken refused to cooperate until the very end.
When Rozovsky was asked whether Olmert was open to a grand bargain with the state that would forgo the appeals process in both trials, the attorney did not say no. He just blurted the standard boilerplate response that he would not discuss his client's cases in the media. Is Olmert's team of the belief that there is nothing more to be done? That there is no more hope? It is too early to tell.
State prosecutor Uri Korb also kept his cards close to his chest on Monday when he said that it may be too late to strike a deal. The ship may have already sailed, but Olmert could nevertheless seek this path, providing he sheds his hubris. (By the way, wasn't there supposed to be another trial over his alleged obstruction of justice-)
If a grand plea bargain is negotiated, it must include three ironclad components:
• Olmert must confess and own up to the crimes. He must concede that he knew his acts were illegal at the time they were committed, and he must express remorse.
• He must apologize before the people he maligned, including former State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss (and Yaakov Borovsky, who investigated Olmert at Lindenstrauss' bureau), former State Attorney Moshe Lador and former Accountant General Yaron Zelekha (and possibly to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, whom he accused of corruption in his secret recordings). His apologies should leave no wiggle room, to avoid a scenario in which he retracts his statements.
• He must be imprisoned for a long time. He might not have to get the maximum sentence, and prosecutors don't have to draw blood, but they would have to do more than just follow the dry letter of the law. Olmert's punishment must carry meaning.
Justice may have to wait as both parties deliberate their next step. The Supreme Court will likely be the next stop. As far as Olmert is concerned, there is still a long way to go before a deal is signed. He is playing for time and now has 45 days to decide whether to appeal Monday's sentence (and the conviction to which it was attached). He will likely file a motion for continuance, essentially extending that period well beyond the court's summer recess. This is the Olmert modus operandi, where foot-dragging is king.
This major corruption case has dragged on for years. It has become a farce. The public has lost faith in its justice system, and now it is up to the Supreme Court justices to undo the damage caused by this never-ending saga.
Olmert's other guilty verdict, in the Holyland trial, has already been appealed. The highest court of the land has heard all the arguments and read all the documents relating to that trial, and a decision is long overdue. A five-judge panel, led by Justice Salim Joubran, convened last December to deliberate the case. I believe a period of six months is ample time to make a decision. The court must hand down its decision now, for the sake of the public, and perhaps even for the sake of the convicted. A timely decision is in order, because Olmert's defense team is a perpetual motion machine; it keeps going and going. Even if the Supreme Court rules against him, he will seek a retrial and another retrial and another retrial.
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