She joined the bar of the Paris criminal court shortly before 6 p.m., after having shaken her head in disagreement since the beginning of the afternoon, sitting on a bench, while the ex-treasurer of the party, Wallerand de Saint -Just, was questioned.
“Since” the start of the trial, “we have been dealing with around ten emails and SMS messages, which we consider to be poorly written, suspicious, clumsy. But that’s still around ten emails out of tens of thousands,” begins the leader of the far right, as soon as the president gives her the floor.
“Share”
In a long tirade lasting more than an hour, the three-time presidential candidate then unfolds her argument, sometimes rewriting the file, eluding the angry points. In 2014, with 23 newly elected European deputies and without a parliamentary group, the FN was obliged to “pool” the work of its assistants, argues the defendant.
However, this does not mean that the envelopes of RN MEPs, 21,000 euros per month, were managed by the party leadership in particular in order to pay “fictitious” parliamentary assistants who actually worked for the party, as is convinced. the accusation, she insists.
Interrogation after interrogation, contract by contract, the court has been dissecting since September 30 this famous “system” – the word puts Marine Le Pen beside herself – which would have allowed the National Rally (ex-FN) to “relieve the finances” of the left between 2004 and 2016.
The eight other former Frontist MEPs and twelve of their parliamentary assistants, tried alongside him for embezzlement of public funds and concealment of this crime, all swore to have worked within the rules. Even if the collaborators occupied particularly demanding positions in France, such as bodyguards or personal assistants to Jean-Marie Le Pen.
“Destabilized”
“The fact of being a parliamentary assistant says nothing about the content of the work. It will go from the secretary to the speechwriter, from the lawyer to the graphist, from the bodyguard to the person who is on duty,” says Marine Le Pen. “There are as many possible tasks as there are parliamentary assistants! »
After appearing as an MEP, she is questioned with her second “hat”, president of the party, of which she took the lead after her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2011, this time to answer for complicity in embezzlement. public.
“If we are convinced that there is a system, that everything is suspicious, obviously you will find something,” she tells the court – which has still not asked a question. Before sharing his “feelings” from this month of hearing: “On many occasions, your opinion was already made up, our arguments evacuated […] It unsettled me a little. »
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