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The deputy works at the Élysée to rally his former LR comrades to Emmanuel Macron
He usually prefers to stay hidden in the shadows. But the campaign shined a light on his political maneuverings. Banned from the Republicans in 2017 for having joined the macronie, Thierry Solère, 50, is struggling to poach as many leaders from the right as possible. Devilishly friendly, the elected Hauts-de-Seine (and determined to remain so) has made his viper language a weapon of massive seduction. To the point that Emmanuel Macron turns a blind eye to his many court cases and his taste for three-cushion billiards. Paris Match is investigating the president’s best canvasser or how the former spokesperson for François Fillon whom he nicknamed François Pignon as the hero of the “Dinner of idiots” imposed himself at the heart of the Elysian reactor. The “official blaster of the right” would have dreamed of the Ministry of the Interior, but his legal troubles have prospered, to the point of facing today thirteen indictments, in particular for “tax fraud”, “fictitious employment” and ” embezzlement of public funds,” writes Sophie des Désert in the portrait she paints in Paris Match. Accusations which he denies, his lawyers, Mathias Chichportich and Pierre-Olivier Sur, denouncing “a judicial cavalry marred by numerous irregularities”.
Among the LRs, the sole name of Solère still weighs down the atmosphere
At La République en Marche, we observe the adviser with a mixture of fear and admiration. “He has know-how”, some remark, others: “Return of the old world… With Thierry, we are between ‘Black Baron’ and ‘Les tontons flingueurs’.” At the HQ of the Republicans, the sole name of Solère still weighs down the atmosphere, Éric Ciotti calls him “the traitor”; Valérie Pécresse, she only lets go in private, outraged by the manners of the one she knows too well. “I play a small role in the recomposition,” he exults, phone resting on his Gargantua fingers. “Politics, he professes, is judo,” he tells us. After the failure of LREM in the municipal elections, the adviser was instructed by Emmanuel Macron to raise the bar and attract as many elected LRs as possible.