The mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris has taken up accusations from a former collaborator against the former president of the LREM group in the Assembly.
Rachida Dati is going to war against the presidential majority in Paris. As the first round of the legislative elections is fast approaching, the mayor of the 7th arrondissement seized the prosecutor against the LREM deputy for Paris Gilles Le Gendre, according to information from the Parisian . The former Keeper of the Seals judges that the elected official is implicated in cases of moral and sexual harassment, when he was at the head of the LREM group in the National Assembly (2018-2020).
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To request the opening of a judicial inquiry, the former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy partly bases her accusations on a recent article by Mediapart, which recalls allegations already made in 2018 against Gilles Le Gendre, during his election at the head of the LREM group in the Assembly. They argued, “inappropriate behavior“of the parliamentarian” with regard to at least one parliamentary assistant“. At the time, Gilles Le Gendre had already denied the facts of which he was accused.
In her referral to the Paris prosecutor this Monday, May 30, Rachida Dati recalls the various challenges to which the deputy has been the subject since 2020 and considers that these elements “seem to justify the opening of an investigation, particularly with regard to the seriousness of the facts, the quality of their presumed perpetrators and the institutional forum where they allegedly occurred“.
Gilles Le Gendre accuses Rachida Dati of “slanderous denunciation»
The deputy of Paris estimates in a press release that the former Keeper of the Seals revives “the rumor having been used for crude manipulation to try to prevent his election as president of the LREM group in 2018“. The parliamentary assistant with whom he may have behaved inappropriately did not wish to follow up. The deputy is now a candidate for re-election in the 2nd district of Paris, which includes part of the 7th arrondissement, that of Rachida Dati. He will notably face him the candidate of the Republicans Jean-Pierre Lecoq, mayor of the 6th.
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The temporality of the highlighting of this affair by Rachida Dati also questions the macronist. “A few days before an election in a constituency of which I am the outgoing deputy, she, one of the mayors, support of one of my competitors, it is easy to imagine the motivations of this self-proclaimed character witness“, reacted Gilles Le Gendre. The elected official recalls that no complaint has been filed against him. He asked his lawyerto sue for slanderous denunciation“.
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