David Sharan, political adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, made explosive claims Wednesday against Israeli investigators, alleging they pressured him during questioning to produce incriminating material against the prime minister in exchange for leniency.
Speaking in an interview on Galei Yisrael radio, Sharan said the goal behind what he called the "thousands" cases was to hunt down the prime minister and his family and remove them from power entirely, since those pursuing the cases understood that removing Netanyahu through an election was not possible. He noted that even former Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit had said that without the suspicion of bribery, he would not have filed an indictment at all.
Sharan went further, saying investigators told him explicitly during questioning to bring anything on Netanyahu or former minister Yuval Steinitz, telling him they would find a way to work with him if he did. He said this was stated unequivocally. He also claimed investigators planted spyware on his phone, saying that when he first raised the allegation, investigators denied it, but that attorney Amit Hadad later proved they had lied and had used the spyware on his phone to gather information for Case 1000.
Sharan argued the case cannot end merely in an acquittal, saying it must also end with the conviction of whoever is responsible for what he called this madness. He asked what happens to an ordinary citizen if the most senior official in the State of Israel can have something like this framed against him.
Sharan, a former Netanyahu chief of staff, is himself a defendant in the submarine affair (Case 3000) on bribery charges, and previously served as a state witness in Case 4000, one of the corruption cases against Netanyahu, before recanting his police testimony when he took the stand in 2022. Netanyahu appointed him as his political adviser in 2023 and, in October 2025, named him acting director-general of the Likud party, a designation reportedly given because of Sharan's pending bribery charges and his status as a witness in the Netanyahu trial.
