President Donald Trump has made official a suggestion that he first issued on the floor of Israel’s parliament: that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be pardoned preemptively for his alleged crimes.

Trump made the case in a letter to Israeli President Isaac Herzog that Herzog’s office released on Wednesday. In it, Trump calls Netanyahu a “formidable and decisive War Time Prime Minister” and characterizes his prosecution as “lawfare,” a term that when used pejoratively refers to the misuse of legal systems to achieve ideological ends.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu has stood t all for Israel in the face of strong adversaries and long odds, and his attention cannot be unnecessarily diverted,” Trump writes.

He adds, “While I absolutely respec

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