Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said Thursday he intends on indicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges.
In a statement, he revealed that he intended to charge the premier pending a hearing, where Netanyahu would be given a chance to defend himself before charges are filed.
"The attorney general has reached his decision after thoroughly examining the evidence," his statement said.
Police had recommended indicting Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three different cases that ranged from accepting expensive gifts from wealthy allies to allegedly trading influence for more favorable press coverage.
The announcement comes ahead of April 9 elections in which Netanyahu is facing a tough challenge from a centrist political alliance headed by a respected former military chief of staff, Benny Gantz.
Netanyahu dismissed Mandelblit’s possible announcement as a politically motivated "witch-hunt" and vowed to clear his name.
"There is nothing to these (allegations)," he said in a televised statement. "This entire house of cards will collapse."
"Unilateral publication of the attorney general's announcement just a month before the elections, without giving the prime minister an opportunity to refute these false accusations, is a blatant and unprecedented intervention in the elections," Likud said in a statement.
The move to indict Netanyahu will further shake up an election campaign that has already turned into a mudslinging fest.
Netanyahu has been prime minister for a total of around 13 years and he would be on track to surpass founding father David Ben-Gurion as Israel's longest-serving premier should he win in April.
An indictment would mark the first time in Israeli history that a sitting prime minister has been charged with a crime. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert served time in prison for corruption, but had already resigned by the time he was charged.
While Israeli prime ministers are not required by law to resign if charged, the prospect of a prime minister standing trial while simultaneously running the country would be unchartered territory.
Mandelblit's decision could either galvanize Netanyahu's hard-line supporters who see him as a victim of an overzealous prosecution or turn more moderate backers against him who have tired of his lengthy rule tainted by long-standing accusations of corruption and hedonism.
US President Donald Trump, with whom Netanyahu has forged a close connection, offered the Israeli leader a boost ahead of the expected announcement.
"I just think he's been a great prime minister and I don't know about his difficulty but you tell me something people have been hearing about, but I don't know about that," he said in response to a question in Hanoi, where he was holding a summit with the leader of North Korea.
"I can say this: that he's done a great job as prime minister. He's tough, he's smart, he's strong," Trump said.
Netanyahu rushed back Wednesday from a diplomatic mission to Moscow, and a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, to prepare for his expected rebuttal to the charges on Thursday.
