In a statement, the U.S. Embassy said Mr. Huckabee had “meetings with numerous people, and as a matter of general policy, we do not comment as to the content of conversations.” It also claimed The Times’s reporting for this article was “filled with inaccuracies.”
Mr. Pollard, 71, was convicted of spying for Israel and sentenced to life in prison in 1987 in one of the most notorious espionage cases of the Cold War. While many Americans viewed him as a traitor, some Israelis, especially those on the right, considered him a hero and lobbied for him until he was released on parole in 2015.
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Five years later, he moved to Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave him a hero’s welcome on the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport.
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.