So your main line of defense would be to denounce a political trial?
No, we are not in a dictatorship where judges are subservient to political power. On the other hand, it is a trial initiated by political adversaries – the former socialist president of the European Parliament who is close to Madame Taubira – for political reasons. There will therefore be a question of politics everywhere during this trial targeting a party whose electoral growth rightly threatened federalism.
You seem to forget that François Bayrou and the MoDem also had to answer for this type of facts…
In this story, the MoDem took a stray bullet thanks to Sophie Montel. This former FN deputy got angry in her corner, without asking anyone’s opinion before throwing information to the prosecutor who, faced with the controversy, was obliged to launch proceedings. But the reality is that all political parties have operated this way since the creation of the European Parliament, without ever thinking that it would pose the slightest problem.
Didn’t you fear that this trial would tarnish the image of a party which claims to be more virtuous than the others?
Since we deny having committed a crime, our virtue is not in question. On the other hand, we believe that our deputies and their assistants are not employees of Parliament, but first and foremost those of the voters. Telling us how to work in politics seems extravagant to us.
Alexandre Varaut, RN MEP and lawyer.
A.V.
“Telling us how to work to do politics seems extravagant to us”
Does this mean that you are free from the rules?
In my opinion, this is absolutely not a rule, or perhaps an internal rule that no one has understood, especially in the ranks of the minority parties. When the majority makes the law alone, it is logical that the others devote themselves more to playing politics, including for their party. Let’s say that unlike the MoDem, we do not really contest these facts which have not given rise to any personal enrichment.
No suspicion of personal enrichment, but that of having filled the coffers of a party then on the verge of bankruptcy…
Don’t look for a motive for a crime that doesn’t exist. We were pulling the devil by the tail, but like all the parties at that time when the PS, for example, had to sell Solférino. If it is true that we chose to recruit our parliamentary assistants among FN activists and employees, it is only so that they think like the deputies. Certainly this reduced the party’s payroll, but only for three months, since we quickly rehired staff.
Despite everything, justice accuses you of a much more pyramidal system than that of the MoDem, with a method of financing organized from the highest summit of the party, that is to say Marine Le Pen in person…
You act as if Bayrou was innocent and Marine Le Pen already guilty before even being judged. Like the others, she will ask to be released, disputing the absurd idea that she told our MEPs that they would have to share their assistants with the party. Once again, the only thing she admits is to have asked to recruit first from the FN pool, and to have granted herself a right of veto to avoid hiring a traitor or a imbecile.
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