Frequentation of the “middle”, “tarufferie” of the host of C8… The lawyer, whom we met in Cannes, attacks Cyril Hanouna in a book.
By Olivier Ubertalli
Published on
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MBut what does Juan Branco, the lawyer with narcissistic outings and sometimes conspiratorial bestsellers, want from Cyril Hanouna, a powerful troublemaker of the PAF who multiplies the skids on the air? What interest can this slayer of capitalism and the hyperconcentration of the media have in the hands of a handful of billionaires to attack the host who attracts 2 million viewers every evening on C8, a channel of the Vivendi group controlled by Vincent Bolloré and his family? By publishing the 1er june his book Chanuna published by Au diable vauvert, the former student of the Alsatian school in Paris, who defines himself as “a little bourgeois child”, isn’t he just looking to create a buzz?
At a table in a bar-tabac in Cannes, we ask all these questions to Juan Branco. The 33-year-old lawyer who defended Julian Assange and Jean-Luc Mélenchon came to enjoy the film festival. From its films, its beaches and its luxury galas where French and American stars parade. We would almost forget that Juan Branco, also indicted for rape and sanctioned with a reprimand in the Griveaux affair, preaches for his 211,000 subscribers on Twitter against “the capture of democracy by powerful oligarchs in favor of caste interests. The virulent opponent of Emmanuel Macron, who defended the Yellow Vests, sometimes flirts with conspiratorial circles and promotes the insurrection over his works does not seem to be a contradiction.
He is a friend of Catherine Deneuve and his father is a great Portuguese producer who worked with Manoel de Oliveira, Raoul Ruiz and Wim Wenders. His last appearance in November 2022 on Cyril Hanouna’s show, Do not touch My TV, would have opened his eyes. Juan Branco was then on set with his client Damien Tarel, sentenced to four months in prison for having slapped Emmanuel Macron in June 2021. “I had been struck by the whole staging with Cyril Hanouna and his columnists sitting in a circle. There was a concentrate of circus”, recalls Juan Branco, whose video of “decryption” published in stride was a great success.
READ ALSODoes Cyril Hanouna jeopardize the Canal+ house?
ego duel
His book looks like a duel of egos when he accuses from the first lines Cyril Hanouna, “the instrument in damaged hands”, and slays the producer of the animator, Stéphane Courbit, owner of Banijay, who controls H20, the company of the presenter of C8, and of which Vivendi is a shareholder. TPMP, he writes, “produces an extremely powerful destabilization of one of society’s essential regulatory mechanisms, namely the judicial edifice, the limits of which Mr. Hanouna regularly tests, gradually extending the areas of his sovereignty. This exhilarating power produces disturbing and sometimes disturbing effects. Mr. Hanouna will thus have enabled the rehabilitation of Marco Mouly, a small scammer from Belleville who succeeded in siphoning off billions of euros from the state coffers, and therefore of resources deducted each year from all French people, by setting up this what has been called carbon tax and VAT fraud. »
Juan Branco has linked language with Cyril Hanouna’s best enemy, Booba, the exile from Miami, who criticizes the television host for not having firmly attacked Magali Berdah and the other influencers of the Banijay-Shauna galaxy Events. The rapper even promised the lawyer to read a few passages from Chanuna by the fire, cigar in hand. “There is a very powerful co-dependency between Bolloré-Courbit-Hanouna and influencers”, denounces the lawyer opposite us before adding: “The State is largely responsible for the decadence of reality TV via the attributions of frequencies. It gives visibility to scum of humanity that sells junk and rips people off. According to Juan Branco, “Cyril Hanouna is like a temple priest, ready to circumvent political authority by forgiving the actions of his guests if they submit. As an alternative to the secular republican state and its courts. But he is on a ridge line, trying to please the people and while receiving ministers, which gives him power and protects him from Arcom (ex-CSA)”. Understand who can…
We are surprised when reading his book that it is not an investigation of Cyril Hanouna. It is more of a very personal – and self-centred – decoding of the show. He sometimes sticks to a formal criticism of the columnists of C8. “All these people are paid, on average between 300 and 500 euros per broadcast, to agree to submit to the conductor, the presenter, who alone will have the possibility of altering the course of the broadcast, and, after having distributed the floor according to the interest he will have in defending such and such a point of view without having to expose himself, by preserving in a way an “immunity totem” which will help him to better ‘identify with the public, will guide the debate in order to satisfy the latter,’ explains the author, who seems to have discovered entertainment television.
Face to face between two tartuffes
There are few explosive lines in this work, which sometimes takes on the appearance of face-to-face between two tartuffes. “I am not in a position of denunciation. My role is to try to understand, explain and draw conclusions,” defends the lawyer. The latter says he understands Cyril Hanouna when he vilifies France Inter or Yann Barthès from Daily. “He, at least, does not wear a suit and accepts his stupidity and having no taste,” he adds. Will the Juan Branco-Cyril Hanouna cockfight take place? The lawyer pretends not to believe it, bravado. “Cyril Hanouna will not dare to attack us head-on, unlike the show Further investigation being filmed on him. He knows it would be destructive for him, he suggests. He may do so indirectly via his mafia networks, his relays to the government or Mimi Marchand. “Juan Branco feels for the moment protected by the” large base “, he says, of some 200,000 people who follow him on social networks. And maybe Booba’s 6 million followers on Twitter who weigh in on Hanouna’s other 6 million. The confrontation has only just begun.