Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on Monday for the 14th time to testify in the Tel Aviv District Court in the cases against him.
Adv. Amit Hadad opened the session and asked to hear the Prime Minister's thoughts on a 2015 article in Haaretz titled: "Not just Israel Hayom: the popular Walla website is at Netanyahu's service."
The Prime Minister responded with a smile: "That's total nonsense. It even made me laugh. It was idiotic and remains idiotic."
Hadad noted to Netanyahu that "the article claimed that Walla was providing you with defense, defense because of clear crony capitalism, not because of ideology."
Netanyahu replied: "That's a total lie, they did not give me any safety belt, only nails. (Shaul) Elovitch's relationship with me was ideological, not crony capitalism. He even paid dearly for the reforms that I passed and the wholesale market. I spoke with Weinroth after the gifts affair and he told me 'Bibi, you're allowed to, this is nonsense, no one looked at it seriously.'"
He added: "There's a public defamation attempt that aims to prevent me from passing the reforms that I wanted, with the Public Broadcasting Corporation as well. I didn't think that a criminal process would be launched because of this lie and that I would find myself talking about this lie ten years later."