“Magnificent coup d’état or judicial coup d’état?”

Gilles-William Goldnadel is a lawyer and essayist. Every week, he deciphers the news for FigaroVox. He published War diary. It is the West that we are assassinating (Fayard, 2024). He is also president of Lawyers Without Borders.

Do the requisitions of the public prosecutor at the National Rally trial embody a masterful coup or a judicial coup d'état? We will know in the spring when the decision is made. I remind you that the prosecutor requested that Marine Le Pen be ineligible for five years, with immediate execution.

Let's quickly move on to the excessive and exceptional severity of the sanction suggested to the judges: five years in prison, including three years suspended and a fine of three hundred thousand euros. Without affecting the presumption of innocence, heavy factual burdens appear to weigh on those concerned. And the amounts involved are not negligible. But even the prosecution admits that no personal enrichment was sought or obtained.

As for the moral element, not to write intentionally, the RN has never made a secret of its mediocre attachment to the European Parliament, at the origin of the prosecutions, unlike the National Assembly. The nationalist party has therefore favored work devoted to the second rather than the first, which, obviously, does not prevent the material constitution of the possible offense. But what shocks, and even revolts both the lawyer and the citizen, is the request for ineligibility and even more so that for the immediate execution of the judgment to be intervened, notwithstanding an appeal to the Court of Appeal.

Regarding the first, the prosecutor, even if he is not an attentive observer of political life, is undoubtedly informed that one of the defendants is considered to be a candidate for the supreme office with the greatest chance of winning. to obtain the favor of the French people. Thus, even though we are not in a criminal context, he asks judges to assume the right to deprive the French of the most sacred right. But above all, what shocks and revolts even more, is the request – very rare in such a matter – to see the immediate execution by first degree judges of a provisional decision of ineligibility despite an obvious appeal and a possible appeal to cassation.

Time will tell whether it was a coup d'état or a judicial coup d'état. If it is the second, it is a safe bet that the French people in whose name justice is supposed to be rendered will only appreciate it very mediocrely.

Gilles-William Goldnadel

With a somewhat inappropriate irony, the representative of the prosecution felt it necessary to point out that the anti-lax party would be poorly placed to complain about excessive judicial severity. This strange logic amounts somewhat to advocating cutting off the heads, notwithstanding any equitable justice, of supporters of the reestablishment of the death penalty… It is true that the former National Front had once championed maximum judicial severity. , regardless of the crimes and misdemeanors. I have always deplored his ignorant demagoguery.

For my part, rightly or wrongly, under my dress or in pants, I have always believed that I had to differentiate between blood crimes and money crimes. In any case, I am not in the worst position to write that as much as French justice is slow and weak with regard to the former, it is diligent, efficient, motivated and implacable with regard to the latter. With it is true, even more severity or celerity when your name is Fillon, Gueant or Sarkozy. The same applies to crimes of opinion.

A sad mind like mine sees in it the mark of ideology. Is this red mark present in the aforementioned requisitions? I don't know, but precisely, the prosecutor will have done everything through his excesses to make her suspect. Even if I were to affirm it, I would not be guilty of contempt of court, because a representative of the prosecution is not considered an independent magistrate, being placed hierarchically under the control of a government minister. This is precisely where the problem lies and gives rise to all the suspicions that neither Caesar's wife nor a public prosecutor should arouse by her excesses. Time will tell whether this was a coup or whether it will be a judicial coup.

One thing is certain, if it is the second, it is a safe bet that the French people in whose name justice is supposed to be rendered will only appreciate it very mediocrely. Recent events on the other side of the Atlantic teach us that people can no longer stand the unjust intellectual or cultural dictatorship of the so-called artistic or media elites. Especially when their sufficiency is matched only by their insufficiency. The same could be true of the judiciary. Please ensure that French justice, whose weakness we know, does not use its strength unfairly here.