At the trial of FN parliamentary assistants, defendants barely defended, unlike the party

The defense is a bit paradoxical: the lawyers of the National Rally (RN) have chosen to undermine from within the entire file of the party's assistants in the European Parliament, in increasing disorder and with dubious effectiveness. It is in fact a question of breaking the idea that the National Front (the former RN) had established a financing system in Brussels, and above all of preserving the candidate in the presidential election. And too bad for the collateral damage, the case of the defendants is barely mentioned and almost not defended. Most of the accused did not come to listen to their lawyers, and that is fortunate for their morale.

Thus, after Mᵉ François Wagner who defended four people alone Monday, Mᵉ Nicolay Fakiroff pleaded, Tuesday November 19, for three clients at once, and not the least: three MEPs at the time, Louis Aliot, today number two of the RN, and two former vice-presidents of the party, Nicolas Bay and Bruno Gollnisch. The lawyer had a kind word for his clients: “The unstoppable Gollnisch, the bard of the Gallic village”the one who regularly ends up gagged in Asterix ; Louis Aliot, “so expansive, so affable, who observes a stubborn silence” while his assistant “relieved his conscience” ; and Nicolas Bay, whose lawyer points out that he produced a false file, in case the court had forgotten it.

Mᵉ Fakiroff insisted for two hours on two strong points, which “have vertebrated” his reflection. “Marine Le Pen said it, but who does the MP work for? Is it for himself? It has a political, constitutional vision of the parties, which contribute to the expression of suffrage and organize it freely. » Then, Guillaume L'Huillier, Bruno Gollnisch's first assistant, “who exclaimed: “It is not because one is a parliamentary assistant that one becomes an activist, it is because one is an activist that one becomes a parliamentary assistant.” ». In summary, the MP necessarily plays politics, his assistant too. From there to being paid by Parliament to work for the party, there is a step, which Mᵉ Fakiroff was careful not to take.

Perpignan town hall in balance

He minimized “fraud on an unprecedented scale” underlined by the prosecution, by dividing the 4.6 million euros embezzled by the total number of deputies per year, less the sums already reimbursed, to arrive at a total of 22,000 euros per year and per deputy. While Parliament's budget is 2.5 billion euros. “Where do your taxes go? »the lawyer was indignant. He considered that the prosecution's requisitions were “unworthy”just good to deliver “certificates of infamy”notably to Bruno Gollisch, with a sentence of ineligibility while “his political future is behind him » and that he only aspires to be a municipal councilor of his village of 600 inhabitants.

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