A former California water official has pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal water in a deal with federal prosecutors in the state’s crop-rich central valley.

The Los Angeles Times reports Tuesday that 78-year-old Dennis Falaschi, who used to head the Panoche water district, entered the plea in federal court in Fresno. He also pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return.

Falaschi was accused in a case that alleged that more than $25m in water was stolen over two decades when it was siphoned from a federal irrigation canal through a secret pipe and sold to farmers and other water districts. The Panoche water district supplies irrigation for farmland in Fresno and Merced counties – much of it from the federal Delta-Mendota canal.

Authorities said in court documents that Falaschi wasn’t the only one taking water, but did not specify who else was involved. They estimated Falaschi stole less than $3.5m in water, a small portion of what they initially alleged had been stolen.

The case comes as California has embarked on a years-long effort to conserve water use by passing a groundbreaking law to regulate groundwater pumping, encouraging urban users to replace thirsty lawns with more drought-friendly landscaping and ramping up water storage efforts to help the state navigate expected dry years ahead.

The state moved to reduce groundwater use after over-pumping led farmers to drill deeper for water and some rural wells to grow dry. The prospect of pumping limits has worried California farmers who grow much of the country’s fresh produce.

Falaschi, who has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in any additional investigations, is scheduled to be sentenced in September. He declined to comment after Tuesday’s hearing.

Assistant US attorney Joseph D Barton also declined to comment.

Harvard University announced on Tuesday that it would no longer take official positions on policy issues following widespread student-led protests over the war in Gaza.

The decision from Harvard comes after the university formed a working group in April to decide if it should continue making public comment on “salient issues”, according to an email announcing the decision.

The working group determined: “The university and its leaders should not … issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.”

When asked for comment, a representative of Harvard University directed the Guardian to an earlier statement.

The university said, in part: “We have accepted the faculty Working Group’s report and recommendations, which also have been endorsed by the Harvard Corporation. The process of translating these principles into concrete practice will, of course, require time and experience, and we look forward to the work ahead.”

Harvard’s decision has already received intense scrutiny from other academics who accuse the university of pretending to be neutral amid Israel’s war in Gaza while being financially invested.

Michael S Roth, the president of Wesleyan University who spoke out about the upcoming election and how politicians have been attacking “higher education”, “democracy” and “the rule of law” in his commencement speech this year, quipped on X, formerly known as Twitter, that his speech was not intended to be taken quite this way.

“By ‘fighting back’ I didn’t mean neutrality about the freedoms, rights & responsibilities that make education possible.”

He told students in his speech: “The attack on higher education, on democracy, on the rule of law, threatens to sweep away the freedoms that have been hard won over the last 100 years. We can fight back. Between now and 5 November, many of our students, faculty, staff and alumni will be practicing freedom by participating in the electoral process. They will work on behalf of candidates and in regard to issues bearing on the future of fairness, inclusion, free speech and the possibilities for full engagement with others.”

Eric Reinhart, a PhD candidate at Harvard and psychoanalytic clinician, also criticized Harvard for suggesting neutrality while having investments in the US and Israeli military.

“Harvard declares itself neutral with respect to political affairs, while actively investing in arms manufacturers and continuing with its myriad contracts with Israel and the US military. Rather convenient notion of neutrality and institutional responsibility, if you ask me,” Reinhart said on X.

Others have defended Harvard’s decision as a needed step to protect free speech.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression applauded Harvard’s decision as a form of institutional neutrality “which preserves colleges and universities’ ability to defend the rights of all students and faculty without apology or qualification”, the organization said on X.

The latest change in policy comes after graduating students led a mass demonstration at Harvard University’s commencement ceremony over its treatment of pro-Palestinian student protestors.

Thirteen students were barred from graduating over their involvement in pro-Palestinian encampments, a decision that was met with widespread condemnation from students and faculty.

Two commencement speakers criticized the university’s decision to bar the students, despite pushback.

Harvard joins other universities who have embraced public neutrality as a strategy to defend free speech. In a unanimous vote earlier this year, Columbia University’s senate recently adopted institutional neutrality; efforts by faculty at schools like the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University are looking to follow suit.

The University of Chicago is widely known for its protection of free speech on campus, including its refusal to make public statements on policy issues. But the university recently came under scrutiny for calling police on pro-Palestinian encampment protests, a move that many interpreted as a stance on the issue, the New York Times reported.

Manchester United staff have been offered early payment of an annual bonus if they resign by next ­Wednesday, as part of Sir Jim ­Ratcliffe’s edict to get all employees into the club’s offices and his push to trim the workforce.

United have made it compulsory from 1 June for staff to work from their offices in either ­Manchester or London rather than at home. Staff were informed in an email on Tuesday that anyone who does not wish to ­conform can quit and claim their bonus early for this season.

It is understood the terms are also on offer to those who work exclusively from the offices but want to take the opportunity to leave with a payoff.

The bonus, which will ­otherwise be paid in September, can be worth four-figure sums for some staff. United employees have until noon next Wednesday to confirm they wish to resign.

The email said of the office‑only policy: “Whilst many have ­welcomed our new approach, we are aware that a number of colleagues prefer not to commit to this new way of working and are keen to understand their options. With this feedback in mind and the fact that we respect each colleague’s right to choose their approach to work, we will allow those who wish to resign now to claim their bonus early for this season if they cannot work from our offices from 1 June.”

United believe, the email said, that “a return to office will bring ­substantial benefits for ­individuals, teams, and the wider club and ­support our journey to return Manchester United to footballing success”.

A United spokesperson said: “This isn’t a voluntary redun­dancy programme. The club recognises that not everyone wants to work from the office full‑time so has provided options for staff who don’t wish to return to the office to step away now.”

Ratcliffe, the 27.7% minority owner, believes the workforce can be trimmed and has previously cited email traffic statistics to staff as the basis for a ban on working from home, telling them to seek ­“alternative employment” if they were not ­willing to come to club offices.

In an email sent to staff last ­Friday, plans for an end to home ­working were outlined.

“To ensure we have enough space for colleagues to work safely, we will convert the Trinity Club, the Knights Lounge and the 1999 Suite in East Stand into office space,” the email said. “This is ­addition to ­existing facilities in the Engine Room and elsewhere across the stadium. Each desk will have a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

“The London office will be reconfigured to allow additional space for teams. Some teams will also be based at the Ineos office at Hans ­Crescent in Knightsbridge.”

Ratcliffe is this week leading a ­season review, which was not expected to be concluded on Tuesday. Sir Dave Brailsford, Ratcliffe’s key lieutenant, Jean-Claude Blanc, the acting chief executive, and Jason ­Wilcox, the technical director, are the other individuals most prominently involved. Joel Glazer, the United co-owner, will also be consulted.

Once the review is completed a decision will be confirmed on the future of the manager, Erik ten Hag.

With more than $500m in court fines on his back, Donald Trump has sold one of the two private jets he owns to a major Republican donor.

According to FAA records, the former US president transferred ownership of the 1997 Cessna Citation X on 13 May. While it is unclear how much he sold the plane for, the private aviation company evoJets estimates a Citation X costs about $8.5m to $10m.

While FAA records do not name an individual who now owns the plane, the agency lists a Dallas-based holding company called MM Fleet Holdings LLC as the owner of the plane.

The Daily Beast tied the company to Mehrdad Moayedi, an Iranian American real estate developer in Dallas.

FEC records show that Moayedi donated nearly $250,000 to Trump’s re-election campaign in 2019 and 2020. Records show that he has also donated millions to other campaigns, including to Ted Cruz’s Senate re-election campaign and to the Republican National Committee.

Trump’s website still boasts the Cessna Citation X as a “rocket in the sky” that also allows “for entry into smaller airports”. Trump still owns his Boeing 757, his main jet emblazoned with his name, along with a small fleet of helicopters.

The extra cash for Trump will probably help him pay off his various court entanglements. Earlier this year, Trump spent over $200m paying off fines from two civil cases earlier this year. The first was a defamation case from the writer E Jean Carroll, in which Trump was ordered to pay $83.3m. The second was a civil fraud trial that ended in a $454m fine.

In March, a Manhattan appeals court agreed to allow Trump to pay $175m – just a portion of the $454m as the fraud case is under appeal. Trump has said he has about $500m in cash, with the rest of his assets tied up in real estate holdings.

Though Trump was able to pay the appeals bonds for both cases, and will get the money back entirely if his appeals are successful, the cases are just two on Trump’s court docket.

Trump is also facing a criminal trial for covering up hush-money payments during the 2016 election and is working through three other criminal trials. In total, the former president faces 88 criminal charges and is paying hefty legal fees to fight them.

According to the New York Times, Trump has paid more than $100m in legal fees for the cases that have put him in court. While Trump has mostly used donations into political action committees, known as Pacs, to pay the fees, the money has been running out, and Trump’s legal bills continue to rack up. While Trump can tap into his 2024 campaign funds to pay the legal fees, the more he has to pay his lawyers means less money to spend on swaying voters.

Documents obtained from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicate the agency may have presented false information to the public about testing for harmful contaminants in pesticides, according to allegations being made by a watchdog group and a former EPA research fellow.

The claims come almost a year to the day after the EPA issued a May 2023 press release that stated the agency found no per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in testing of samples of certain insecticide products. The press release contradicted a published study by the former EPA researcher that had reported finding PFAS in the same pesticide products.

PFAS contamination is a hot topic in environmental and public health circles because certain types of PFAS are known to be very hazardous for human health, and world governments and public health advocates are pushing to sharply limit exposure to these types of chemicals. Accurate testing for PFAS contamination is key to regulating exposure, making the accuracy and transparency of EPA testing a critical issue.

The allegations that the EPA incorrectly reported some PFAS test results were made Tuesday by the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), led by former EPA employees.

The Peer director of scientific policy Kyla Bennett said that the organization obtained pesticide product testing data from the EPA through a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) request. The documents they received back from the EPA showed the agency had indeed found PFAS in the tested products, directly contradicting the press release the agency had issued.

“It’s pretty outrageous,” said Bennett. “You don’t get to just ignore the stuff that doesn’t support your hypothesis. That is not science. That is corruption. I can only think that they were getting pressure from pesticide companies.”

Joining in the allegations is environmental toxicologist Steven Lasee, who authored the 2022 study that the EPA challenged. Lasee is a consultant for state and federal government agencies on PFAS contamination projects and participated as a research fellow for the EPA’s office of research and development from February 2021 to February 2023.

Retraction sought

The EPA declined to comment, saying “because these issues relate to a pending formal complaint process, EPA has no further information to provide”. But in past statements, the agency has presented itself as taking a tough stand on PFAS contamination. The agency recently finalized drinking water limits for PFAS and is classifying two types of PFAS as hazardous substances. And EPA administrator Michael Regan has stated publicly that the adverse health effects of PFAS “can devastate families”.

The EPA has also recognized the potential for PFAS contamination of pesticides, focusing on pesticides that are stored in fluorinated high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic containers. Last year the agency ordered a prominent manufacturer to stop using PFAS chemicals when producing plastic containers for pesticides and other products.

PFAS chemicals have been used by a variety of industries since the 1940s for such things as electronics manufacturing, oil recovery, paints, fire-fighting foams, cleaning products and non-stick cookware. Some types of PFAS have been linked to cancer, damage to the immune system, birth defects, delayed development in children and other health problems.

In challenging the EPA over the testing issue, Peer submitted a letter to the agency demanding a correction of the EPA’s public statement about the pesticide product analyses and a retraction of the agency’s research memo on the matter.

Peer alleges that as the EPA sought to refute Lasee’s study findings, the agency engaged in “egregious” misconduct and is “guilty of numerous departures from both accepted scientific and ethical practices”.

The agency “provided misinformation to a national audience and intentionally damaged Dr Lasee,” the Peer complaint alleges.

Questions about key findings

The Lasee study that kicked off the fight with the EPA was published in November 2022 in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters. The study said a key finding was the detection of a very harmful type of PFAS known as perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) in six out of 10 insecticides used in cotton fields and in growing other crops, posing a contamination threat to agricultural areas.

The EPA’s response to the study, released six months later, said the agency obtained samples of the same pesticide products from Lasee and also purchased additional products with the same registration numbers to analyze. The agency said unlike Lasee’s results, EPA scientists found no detectable levels of PFOS, nor any of 28 additional PFAS it screened for, and said its equipment and methodology were better than those used by Lasee.

Those findings immediately raised questions about the validity of the testing, according to Lasee and Peer. One concern was that the EPA report did not identify any of the “matrix spike” of PFOS, which was intentionally added to the samples before they were analyzed.

It is common in analytical chemistry to use a matrix spike as a type of quality-control to evaluate the performance of an analytical method. Lasee had not told the agency of the matrix spike, but if their methods were accurate, the agency scientists would have found the spike, he said.

Numerous other flaws and deviations from scientific norms were seen in the testing analyses by the EPA, according to the Peer complaint.

Another significant concern was that while the EPA publicly disclosed the results of two tests conducted on the pesticide product samples, the agency’s internal documents turned over to Peer in response to the Foia request showed the agency had actually conducted four tests.

The documents show that one of the tests did find evidence of PFOS as well as other types of PFAS, which were not introduced as a matrix spike, Peer said.

Peer said it is unclear why the EPA did not report the positive findings of PFAS in pesticides. Regardless, the “presence of PFAS in pesticides points to an appalling regulatory breakdown by EPA”, Peer states in its complaint.

In a letter to Peer responding to some of the concerns raised, the EPA division director Anne Overstreet said the agency “remains confident in our findings” and said the agency’s scientists “maintained scientific integrity and is in compliance with established good laboratory practices”.

Amid the uproar over his paper and the subsequent EPA testing, Lasee sought to reproduce his initial results but was unable to do so. That created enough doubt about his own methodology that he sought to retract his paper.

Now, after seeing the EPA’s internal testing data showing the agency did find PFOS and other types of PFAS in pesticides but failed to disclose those results, he has a new level of doubt – over the credibility of the agency.

“When you cherry pick data, you can make it say whatever you want it to say,” Lasee said.

• This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group

After Donald Trump on Monday again denied rape and defamation claims successfully brought against him by E Jean Carroll, a lawyer for the writer said “all options are on the table”.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, has previously suggested that she could file a third defamation lawsuit against the ex-president for comments he has continued making against Carroll.

During the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social a long rant about his various civil and criminal court entanglements, including litigation leveled against him by Carroll. In April, a federal judge upheld a jury’s decision to award Carroll $83.3m and denied Trump a new trial.

“Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country,” he wrote. He referred to Caroll as “a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!)”.

“She didn’t know when the so-called event took place – sometime in the 1990s – never filed a police report, didn’t have to produce the ‘dress’ that she threatened me with (it showed negative!) … The Rape charge was dropped by a jury!”

Carroll has filed and won two defamation lawsuits against Trump, who she said sexually abused her in a New York department store changing room in 1996. In the lawsuits, Carroll said that Trump’s accusations that she is lying about the case had ruined her reputation.

Trump, who is appealing both cases, appears to be undaunted by the fact that Carroll has already had success in court against him and continues to make comments disparaging her credibility.

In March, Trump told CNBC that “this woman is not a believable person”. He called Carroll “Ms Bergdorf Goodman”, referring to the department store where Carroll said Trump abused her.

“I have no idea who she is,” Trump said in March.

In response to those comments, Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said that “the statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years”.

“As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client,” Kaplan said.

On Monday, Kaplan responded to Trump’s Memorial Day comments, appearing to reiterate her statement from earlier in the spring that suggested she could help Carroll pursue yet another defamation lawsuit against the former president.

“We have said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table,” Kaplan said. “And that remains true today – all options are on.”

“The lunch rush is dead,” an NBC News headline announced this week. Blame it on working from home, tighter budgets, inflation or all of the above: transaction data pulled by the digital-payments app Square found that midday food spending was down 3.3% nationwide last year compared with 2019. The decrease was steeper in some cities, including Boston, Atlanta and Dallas.

While a full obit for the humble lunch break might be premature, a recent report from the University of Toronto backed up the hypothesis that Americans want to spend more on weekend luxuries than a lunch bill. The study found that foot traffic in major US cities remains low on workdays, but higher during the weekend.

“That’s been the largest transformation in the last four or five years – the consumer habits of office workers,” Ara Kharazian, research lead at Square, told NBC News. “But that money has gone somewhere else. We’re seeing consumers instead spend money on the weekends.”

A perfect storm of rising meal expenses and shrinking break times is interfering with people’s ability to enjoy the workday ritual.

On Reddit, users said they often had to bring in food from home to eat at their desks, or wherever they could quickly shovel bites in. “I have an hour for lunch, but Subway is $10 after tax for a damn sandwich, and the actual restaurants are $20-$30,” one wrote. “I’m just going to bring my own food to work, thanks.”

“I work in construction and only get 30 minutes for lunch,” another user wrote. “If I wanted to go out for lunch, my entire lunch break would be taken up by the drive out of the facility, picking up the food, and waiting to get back into the facility because there’s only one entrance and security guard to check us in. So I’m forced to bring lunch in from home and have it in the crew trailer.”

Other notable comments on the thread included: “If lunch costs more than an hour of labor I’m eating in” and “All the comments in this [subreddit] thread are depressing”.

Lunch breaks – which have existed since the industrial revolution – have always been about more than just food. Lunch has also long been a source of tension between management and workers. By the late 19th century, factory owners began allotting a specific amount of time to break for lunch, one that would maximize worker output and make bosses the most money.

“A factory owner wanted to make sure they got the most out of their workers, so they started controlling when they could eat lunch,” said Megan Elias, an associate professor at Boston University and author of Lunch: the History of a Meal.

Before labor unions became widespread and bargained for breaks and time off, lunch was one of the few moments of the workday employees had to themselves. “These were 12-, 14-, 16-hour days,” said Sarah Wassberg Johnson, a historian who studies food and culture. “The lunch break allowed workers to rest in addition to eating a meal that would help them keep their energy up for the rest of the shift.”

As the 20th century unfurled, the amount of time a person spent on lunch corresponded to their social status. Factory workers tended to have the shortest breaks, while clerical employees had more freedom to head to a coffee shop, cafeteria or automat.

Upper management “flexed their authority by taking as long as they felt”, Elias said, sometimes justifying the “working lunch” as a place to make deals – though how much actual work titans of industry got done during those infamous “three-martini lunches” remains up for debate.

Even if they weren’t out dining, workers on the lower rungs found lunch to be a highlight of the day, a sliver of freedom from the drudgery of employment. “It’s unsupervised, and you get to choose what to eat or where to go, so it’s this return to yourself,” Elias said. “Lunch really breaks the control the employer has over an employee for a little while.”

To this day, it’s also a way to forge camaraderie and connections with co-workers. Adrian Einspanier wrote Lunch Bunch, a play that ran at New York’s 122CC theater last year, about their friend, a public defender in the Bronx who operated a lunch-sharing program with their co-workers to distract them from their chaotic work environment.

“It became a way they could take care of each other,” Einspanier said. “It’s a way to share the burden of this super-brutal system they were working under.”

This is not the first declaration that lunch is dead. According to Elias, in the 1990s, lunch “disappeared” for a while. “There was this idea that it was weak to stop for lunch,” she said. Millennial work culture of the 2010s prioritized hustle and the grind, which gave way to the so-called “sad desk lunch”, a totem of hypercapitalism, where office workers memed their solo, undignified meals eaten in front of a computer monitor.

“The fact that the sad desk lunch was mocked meant that we’re still interested in connecting with others over work meals,” Elias added. “I don’t know what exactly people will be eating for lunch in the future, but I do think that people will keep eating together.”

A cinema in Massachusetts has apologised to the audience at a special screening of Jaws and a Q&A with its star, Richard Dreyfuss, who reportedly made a number of sexist and transphobic comments.

Appearing at the Cabot theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts on 25 May, Dreyfuss took to the stage in a house dress to a background track of Taylor Swift’s Love Story, shaking his hips suggestively and brandishing his walking stick like a baseball bat.

He then reportedly took on targets including Barbra Streisand, the parents of trans teenagers and the Academy’s new inclusivity rules.

No transcript of the event has been released, but social media posts suggest that he called Streisand a “genius” but that he didn’t listen to her as she was “a woman, and woman shouldn’t have that power”.

Deadline reports that he also said “you shouldn’t be listening to some 10-year-old who says they want to be a boy instead of a girl”. The Boston Globe reports that he continued by saying that allowing such young people to transition “was bad parenting and that someday those kids might change their minds.”

However, a video from the end of the event indicates that many audience members did remain and were highly appreciative of the actor, who cautioned against a decline in critical thinking to considerable applause.

Writing on The Cabot’s Facebook page, one attender said: “We walked out of his interview tonight along with hundred [sic] of others because of his racist homophobic misogynistic rant.”

Said another: “This was disgusting. How could the Cabot not have vetted his act better. Apparently (I found out too late), he has a reputation for spewing this kind of racist, homophobic, misogynistic bullcrap.”

On 27 May, the venue issued a statement, saying they were “aware of, and share serious concerns, following the recent event with Richard Dreyfuss”.

They continued: “The views expressed by Mr Dreyfuss do not reflect the values of inclusivity and respect that we uphold as an organisation. We deeply regret the distress that this has caused to many of our patrons.

“We regret that an event that was meant to be a conversation to celebrate an iconic movie instead became a platform for political views,” it continued. “We take full responsibility for the oversight in not anticipating the direction of the conversation and for the discomfort it caused to many patrons.”

The statement concluded: “We are in active dialogue with our patrons about their experience and are committed to learning from this event how to better enact our mission of entertaining, educating and inspiring our community.”

The Guardian has contacted representatives for Dreyfuss for comment.

In 2023, Dreyfuss took issue with the Academy over its new diversity and inclusion requirements for Oscar contention. He told PBS: “they make me vomit, because this is an art form”.

“It’s also a form of commerce,” he continued, “and it makes money. But it’s an art. And no one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is.”

The requirements, he went on to say, were “patronising”, and he cited Laurence Olivier’s 1965 Othello, saying: “He played a Black man brilliantly.”

“What are we risking?” Dreyfuss continued. “Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that, and you have to let life be life. And I’m sorry, I don’t think that there is a minority or a majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.”

Dreyfuss was the then-youngest-ever performer to win the leading actor Oscar in 1978 for his role in The Goodbye Girl, and was nominated in the same category for 1995’s Mr Holland’s Opus.

He is best known for his roles in a number of seminal 1970s and 80s classics, including American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Stand By Me.

Donald Trump’s hush-money trial enters its final stages on Tuesday as closing arguments begin in court.

For weeks, testimony has gripped America and the world amid the prospect that the former US president could be found guilty of the criminal charges. Trump, who is almost certain to secure the Republican presidential nomination, is charged with falsifying business records related to paying the adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence about an alleged sexual liaison.

Prosecutors argue that the payments amount to election interference as Trump was running in the 2016 race for the White House at the time and seeking to cover up a potentially damaging scandal.

But as details of the case and Trump’s liaison with Daniels have been brought before a Manhattan jury, they have had seemingly little impact on the 2024 race – where Trump still often narrowly leads Joe Biden in head-to-head polls and is performing strongly in the swings states that are crucial to victory.

Trump denies all the charges.

The trial has played out in remarkable scenes where Trump has been in court and largely kept off the campaign trial, except at weekends and some events in and around New York City. Despite admonishments from the court, he has continued to rail against his prosecutors, and Judge Juan Merchan, on social media, labelling the trial as a “witch hunt”.

Central to the case is the testimony of Trump’s former lawyer and once-feared fixer Michael Cohen. Cohen gave vital evidence for the role that Trump played in the alleged hush-money scheme, but was also brutally grilled by Trump’s lawyers for his previous history of lying and his evident dislike of his former boss and desire to see him behind bars.

What weight the jury places on the reliability of Cohen’s testimony is likely to decide the case one way or the other. If found guilty, Trump could face the prospect of jail, though that is mostly seen as unlikely. Any guilty verdict would also almost certainly trigger a lengthy series of appeals.

Trump also faces three other criminal trials: one for trying to sway the 2020 election in Georgia, another for his conduct around the January 6 attack on the Capitol and a third one related to his treatment of sensitive documents after he left the White House. However, all three have been seriously delayed and none are seen as likely to conclude – or even start – before November’s presidential election.

The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation, the Guardian can reveal.

Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories.

That investigation, launched in 2021, culminated last week when Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, announced that he was seeking an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the country’s conduct in its war in Gaza.

The prosecutor’s decision to apply to the ICC’s pre-trial chamber for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, alongside three Hamas leaders, is an outcome Israel’s military and political establishment has long feared.

Cohen’s personal involvement in the operation against the ICC took place when he was the director of the Mossad. His activities were authorised at a high level and justified on the basis the court posed a threat of prosecutions against military personnel, according to a senior Israeli official.

Another Israeli source briefed on the operation against Bensouda said the Mossad’s objective was to compromise the prosecutor or enlist her as someone who would cooperate with Israel’s demands.

A third source familiar with the operation said Cohen was acting as Netanyahu’s “unofficial messenger”.

Cohen, who was one of Netanyahu’s closest allies at the time and is emerging as a political force in his own right in Israel, personally led the Mossad’s involvement in an almost decade-long campaign by the country to undermine the court.

Four sources confirmed that Bensouda had briefed a small group of senior ICC officials about Cohen’s attempts to sway her, amid concerns about the increasingly persistent and threatening nature of his behaviour.

Three of those sources were familiar with Bensouda’s formal disclosures to the ICC about the matter. They said she revealed Cohen had put pressure on her on several occasions not to proceed with a criminal investigation in the ICC’s Palestine case.

According to accounts shared with ICC officials, he is alleged to have told her: “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.”

One individual briefed on Cohen’s activities said he had used “despicable tactics” against Bensouda as part of an ultimately unsuccessful effort to intimidate and influence her. They likened his behaviour to “stalking”.

The Mossad also took a keen interest in Bensouda’s family members and obtained transcripts of secret recordings of her husband, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the situation. Israeli officials then attempted to use the material to discredit the prosecutor.

The revelations about Cohen’s operation form part of a forthcoming investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, revealing how multiple Israel intelligence agencies ran a covert “war” against the ICC for almost a decade.

Contacted by the Guardian, a spokesperson for Israel’s prime minister’s office said: “The questions forwarded to us are replete with many false and unfounded allegations meant to hurt the state of Israel.” Cohen did not respond to a request for comment. Bensouda declined to comment.

In the Mossad’s efforts to influence Bensouda, Israel received support from an unlikely ally: Joseph Kabila, the former president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who played a supporting role in the plot.

Revelations about the Mossad’s efforts to influence Bensouda come as the current chief prosecutor, Khan, warned in recent days that he would not hesitate to prosecute “attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence” ICC officials.

According to legal experts and former ICC officials, efforts by the Mossad to threaten or put pressure on Bensouda could amount to offences against the administration of justice under article 70 of the Rome statute, the treaty that established the court.

A spokesperson for the ICC would not to say whether Khan had reviewed his predecessor’s disclosures about her contacts with Cohen, but said Khan had never met or spoken to the head of the Mossad.

While the spokesperson declined to comment on specific allegations, they said Khan’s office had been subjected to “several forms of threats and communications that could be viewed as attempts to unduly influence its activities”.

Bensouda sparks ire of Israel

Khan’s decision to seek arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant last week marked the first time the court had taken action against leaders of a country closely allied with the US and Europe. Their alleged crimes – which include directing attacks on civilians and using starvation as a method of warfare – relate to the eight-month war in Gaza.

The ICC case, however, dates back to 2015, when Bensouda decided to open a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine. Short of a full investigation, her inquiry was tasked with making an initial assessment of allegations of crimes by individuals in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Bensouda’s decision sparked the ire of Israel, which feared its citizens could be prosecuted for their involvement in operations in Palestinian territories. Israel had long been open about its opposition to the ICC, refusing to recognise its authority. Israeli ministers intensified their attacks on the court and even vowed to try to dismantle it.

Soon after commencing the preliminary examination, Bensouda and her senior prosecutors began to receive warnings that Israeli intelligence was taking a close interest in their work.

According to two sources, there were even suspicions among senior ICC officials that Israel had cultivated sources within the court’s prosecution division, known as the office of the prosecutor. Another later recalled that although the Mossad “didn’t leave its signature”, it was an assumption the agency was behind some of the activity officials had been made aware of.

Only a small group of senior figures at the ICC, however, were informed that the director of the Mossad had personally approached the chief prosecutor.

A career spy, Cohen enjoys a reputation in Israel’s intelligence community as an effective recruiter of foreign agents. He was a loyal and powerful ally of the prime minister at the time, having been appointed as director of the Mossad by Netanyahu in 2016 after working for several years at his side as his national security adviser.

As the head of the national security council between 2013 and 2016, Cohen oversaw the body that, according to multiple sources, began to coordinate a multiagency effort against the ICC once Bensouda opened the preliminary inquiry in 2015.

Cohen’s first interaction with Bensouda appears to have taken place at the Munich security conference in 2017, when the Mossad director introduced himself to the prosecutor in a brief exchange. After this encounter, Cohen subsequently “ambushed” Bensouda in a bizarre episode in a Manhattan hotel suite, according to multiple sources familiar with the incident.

Bensouda was in New York in 2018 on an official visit, and was meeting Kabila, then the president of the DRC, at his hotel. The pair had met several times before in relation to the ICC’s ongoing investigation into alleged crimes committed in his country.

The meeting, however, appears to have been a setup. At a certain point, after Bensouda’s staff were asked to leave the room, Cohen entered, according to three sources familiar with the meeting. The surprise appearance, they said, caused alarm to Bensouda and a group of ICC officials travelling with her.

Why Kabila helped Cohen is unclear, but ties between the two men were revealed in 2022 by the Israeli publication TheMarker, which reported on a series of secretive trips the Mossad director made to the DRC throughout 2019.

According to the publication, Cohen’s trips, during which he sought Kabila’s advice “on an issue of interest to Israel”, and which were almost certainly approved by Netanyahu, were highly unusual and had astonished senior figures within the intelligence community.

Reporting on the DRC meetings in 2022, the Israeli broadcaster Kan 11 said Cohen’s trips related to an “extremely controversial plan” and cited official sources who described it as “one of Israel’s most sensitive secrets”.

Multiple sources have confirmed to the Guardian the trips were partly related to the ICC operation, and Kabila, who left office in January 2019, played an important supporting role in the Mossad’s plot against Bensouda. Kabila did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Threats and manipulation’

After the surprise meeting with Kabila and Bensouda in New York, Cohen repeatedly phoned the chief prosecutor and sought meetings with her, three sources recalled. According to two people familiar with the situation, at one stage Bensouda asked Cohen how he had obtained her phone number, to which he replied: “Did you forget what I do for a living?”

Initially, the sources explained, the intelligence chief “tried to build a relationship” with the prosecutor and played “good cop” in an attempt to charm her. The initial objective, they said, appeared to have been to enlist Bensouda into cooperating with Israel.

Over time, however, the tone of Cohen’s contact changed and he began to use a range of tactics, including “threats and manipulation”, an individual briefed on the meetings said. This prompted Bensouda to inform a small group of senior ICC officials about his behaviour.

In December 2019, the prosecutor announced that she had grounds to open a full criminal investigation into allegations of war crimes in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, she held off launching it, deciding first to request a ruling from the ICC’s pre-trial chamber to confirm the court did indeed have jurisdiction over Palestine.

Multiple sources said it was at this stage, as the judges considered the case, that Cohen escalated his attempts to persuade Bensouda not to pursue a full investigation in the event the judges gave her the green light.

Between late 2019 and early 2021, the sources said, there were at least three encounters between Cohen and Bensouda, all initiated by the spy chief. His behaviour is said to have become increasingly concerning to ICC officials.

A source familiar with Bensouda’s accounts of the final two meetings with Cohen said he had raised questions about her security, and that of her family, in a manner that led her to believe he was threatening her.

On one occasion, Cohen is said to have shown Bensouda copies of photographs of her husband, which were taken covertly when the couple were visiting London. On another, according to sources, Cohen suggested to the prosecutor that a decision to open a full investigation would be detrimental to her career.

Four sources familiar with the situation said it was around the same time that Bensouda and other ICC officials discovered that information was circulating among diplomatic channels relating to her husband, who worked as an international affairs consultant.

Between 2019 and 2020, the Mossad had been actively seeking compromising information on the prosecutor and took an interest in her family members.

The spy agency obtained a cache of material, including transcripts of an apparent sting operation against her husband.

It is unclear who conducted the operation, or precisely what he is alleged to have said in the recordings. One possibility is that he had been targeted by the intelligence agency or by private actors of another country that wanted leverage over the ICC. Another possibility is the information was fabricated.

Once in the possession of Israel, however, the material was used by its diplomats in an unsuccessful attempt to undermine the chief prosecutor. But according to multiple sources, Israel failed to convince its allies of the significance of the material.

Three sources briefed on the information shared by Israel at a diplomatic level described the efforts as part of an unsuccessful “smear campaign” against Bensouda. “They went after Fatou,” one source said, but it had “no impact” on the prosecutor’s work.

The diplomatic efforts were part of a coordinated effort by the governments of Netanyahu and Donald Trump in the US to place public and private pressure on the prosecutor and her staff.

Between 2019 and 2020, in an unprecedented decision, the Trump administration imposed visa restrictions and sanctions on the chief prosecutor. The move was in retaliation to Bensouda’s pursuit of a separate investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan, allegedly committed by the Taliban and both Afghan and US military personnel.

However, Mike Pompeo, then US secretary of state, linked the sanctions package to the Palestine case. “It’s clear the ICC is only putting Israel in [its] crosshairs for nakedly political purposes,” he said.

Months later, he accused Bensouda, without citing any evidence, of having “engaged in corrupt acts for her personal benefit”.

The US sanctions were rescinded after President Joe Biden entered the White House.

In February 2021, the ICC’s pre-trial chamber issued a ruling confirming the ICC had jurisdiction in occupied Palestinian territories. The following month, Bensouda announced the opening of the criminal investigation.

“In the end, our central concern must be for the victims of crimes, both Palestinian and Israeli, arising from the long cycle of violence and insecurity that has caused deep suffering and despair on all sides,” she said at the time.

Bensouda completed her nine-year term at the ICC three months later, leaving it to her successor, Khan, to take up the investigation. It was only after the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war on Gaza that the ICC’s investigation gained renewed urgency, culminating in last week’s request for arrest warrants.

It was the conclusion Israel’s political, military and intelligence establishment had feared. “The fact they chose the head of Mossad to be the prime minister’s unofficial messenger to [Bensouda] was to intimidate, by definition,” said a source briefed on Cohen’s operation. “It failed.”