By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, together with David Milstein (Mark Levin’s stepson), held an off-the-record meeting at US Embassy Jerusalem with convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, the New York Times reports.
Pollard confirmed “it was a friendly meeting” and trashed Trump as a “madman.”
From The New York Times, “Huckabee Held Meeting at U.S. Embassy With American Who Spied for Israel:
Ambassador Mike Huckabee, President Trump’s envoy to Israel, met at the United States Embassy in Jerusalem in July with Jonathan J. Pollard, an American who spent 30 years in prison for spying for Israel, Mr. Pollard said.
The highly unusual meeting caught some U.S. officials by surprise, and appeared to be a sharp break with years of precedent for American diplomats.
The New York Times learned of the meeting from three U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. When The Times asked Mr. Pollard about the meeting, he confirmed it.
Mr. Pollard said it was the first time that a U.S. official had hosted him at an American government office since his release a decade ago.
“It was a friendly meeting,” Mr. Pollard said in a phone interview on Wednesday.
The meeting with Mr. Pollard, a former naval intelligence analyst, was kept off Mr. Huckabee’s official schedule, two of the U.S. officials said. The fact that it occurred alarmed the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief in Israel, three of the officials said.
[…] It is unclear why Mr. Huckabee and his senior adviser, David Milstein, agreed to meet Mr. Pollard. Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Milstein have made efforts to cultivate ties with the Israeli right, with whom Mr. Pollard identifies. […] Mr. Pollard said he did not regret spying for Israel, claiming the United States had cut Israel out of intelligence sharing. And he castigated Mr. Trump, calling him a “madman who has literally sold us down the drain, for Saudi gold.”
Trump’s DOJ allowed Pollard to “make Aliyah” in Israel after ending his strict parole conditions in 2020.
“After a review of Mr. Pollard’s case, the US Parole Commission has found that there is no evidence to conclude that he is likely to violate the law,” the Justice Department said at the time.
He was then flown to Israel in Dec 2020 on Zionist megadonor Sheldon Adelson’s private plane and given a hero’s welcome, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeting him on the tarmac. Netanyahu rewarded Pollard with Israeli citizenship and a pension reserved for ex-Mossad and Shin Bet agents.
He gave his first interview to Adelson’s Israel Hayom paper, wherein he encouraged all Jews to spy for Israel.
From Israel Hayom:
ISRAEL HAYOM: If a young Jewish naval intelligence officer today is asked by the Mossad to work for Israel, and calls to ask for your advice, what would you tell him?
POLLARD: I’d tell him, not doing anything is unacceptable. So simply going home is not acceptable. Making aliyah is not acceptable. You have to make a decision whether your concern for Israel and loyalty to Israel and loyalty to your fellow Jews, is more important than your life.
Because you know what would probably happen to you if you get caught. It will be hell. But you have to look at yourself every morning in the mirror, and you have to live with yourself. If you do nothing, and you turn your back, or simply make aliyah, and go on with your life, you’ll be no better than those Jews who before and after the destruction of the Temple said, “It’s not my responsibility.”
Pollard said that Jews “will always have dual loyalty”:
POLLARD: If you don’t like the accusation of double loyalty, then go the f*** home. It’s as simple as that. If you live in a country where you are constantly under that charge, then you don’t belong there. You go home. You come home. If you’re outside Israel, then you live in a society in which you are basically considered unreliable. The bottom line on this charge of dual loyalty is, I’m sorry, we’re Jews, and if we’re Jews, we will always have dual loyalty.
American Jewry has one major problem — they consider themselves more American than they do Jews.
David Milstein, who joined Huckabee in the secret Pollard meeting, has been running the show at Embassy Jerusalem:
From The Washington Post, Aug 20, 2025, “State Dept. fires official after internal debates over Israel:
The State Department fired its top press officer for Israeli-Palestinian affairs following multiple disputes over how to characterize key Trump administration policies, including a controversial plan to relocate hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip that critics consider ethnic cleansing, according to U.S. officials and documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
[…] A key opponent of Ghoreishi within the department was David Milstein, a senior adviser to Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Milstein is known for confronting staff throughout the department in defense of the Israeli government, officials familiar with the matter said.Critics of Milstein within the State Department contend he appears overly eager to please Israeli officials and frequently involves himself in matters that are beyond the scope of his responsibilities. “Milstein is an adviser to an ambassador,” one official said. “That’s it, yet he has his hands in everything.”
Milstein and other State Department officials clashed in July when Milstein sought to release a statement under Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s name that condemned Ireland for considering legislation that would ban trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, officials said. The effort alarmed U.S. diplomats in Europe, who viewed the appropriate next step to be consulting with Irish officials in private before publicly condemning the country’s actions. Ultimately, U.S. diplomats overseeing Europe and the Middle East prevailed over Milstein and prevented the statement’s release.
More recently, Milstein and Ghoreishi disagreed over Milstein’s push for the State Department to refer to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria,” the biblical name for the region that is widely used within Israel. The territory is internationally recognized as the West Bank, and Palestinians object to the use of Judea and Samaria as legitimizing Israeli settlements and potential annexation — a concern shared by advocates of a two-state solution.
A Milstein memo reviewed by The Post was drafted in response to questions from the Associated Press about House Speaker Mike Johnson’s visit to the territory. The memo praised Johnson (R-Louisiana) for “making history as the highest-ranking U.S. official and first speaker of the House to ever go to Judea and Samaria.”
Ghoreishi managed to cut that line before it was shared with the news media and inserted previously approved State Department language that used “West Bank” while referring other questions about Johnson’s trip to his “office for further information,” the line said.
Ghoreishi told Democracy Now that Milstein had inordinate influence at Embassy Jerusalem and would “jump in and edit my docs” to change terms like West Bank to “Judea and Samaria.”
Does Milstein sound like someone who is putting America First, or someone who has taken Pollard up on his call?
“What’s it called when you welcome a traitor into the U.S. embassy?” Ghoreishi commented on X after hearing the news.
After “making Aliyah,” Pollard — who is a big celebrity in Israel — gave a speech at a prominent yeshiva where he labeled the Biden administration “Amalek.”
From The Times of Israel, “Pollard: ‘Jew-hatred’ a foundational belief of ‘Amalek’ Biden administration”:
[Jonathan Pollard] began by reflecting on the recent murder of 19-year-old Yehuda Guetta in a terror shooting attack at a West Bank junction.“The murderer was the manifestation of the oldest hatred, more lethal than the deadliest disease known to man — Jew-hatred. Cold-blooded anti-Semitism,” he said, speaking in English. “It’s the foundational belief of our so-called peace partners up the road in Ramallah [the Palestinian Authority], our avowed enemies in Gaza and many of the woke bureaucrats and officials that staff the current Biden administration.”
“What we’re talking about is Amalek, pure and simple,” he said, equating the Biden administration and the Palestinian leadership with the biblical archenemy of the Israelites.
Just a few months after Pollard’s secret meeting with Huckabee and Milstein, he went on JPost to announce plans to run for Knesset on the platform that Israel should use nuclear blackmail against the US to keep aid flowing.
The Trump administration on Thursday defended Huckabee’s secret meeting with Pollard.
“The White House was not aware of that meeting but the President stands by our ambassador,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.