The RN accused of “transmission belt” of Russian power, a “dishonest report” for Marine Le Pen

The National Front, now National Rally, is accused of having been a “transmission belt” of Russian power, according to the conclusions of the commission of inquiry into foreign interference, parliamentary sources told AFP, Marine Le Pen is indignant at a “dishonest” and “politicized” report. Excerpts from the report, written by Renaissance MP Constance Le Grip, leaked Thursday on RMC and Mediapart. She insists on the “alignment” of the FN with the “Russian discourse” at the time of the “illegal annexation” of Crimea in 2014, the year during which the party took out a loan from a Czech bank. Russian.

It was the RN which had launched this parliamentary commission of inquiry, supposed to defuse the regular accusations on the subject. Lepenist elected officials, including committee chairman Jean-Philippe Tanguy, voted against the report, adopted by 11 votes to five, according to a parliamentary source. LFI abstained.

“A guilty casualness” of the RN with regard to Russia

The report shows “at least a guilty casualness” of the RN with regard to Russia, but it is not “exhaustive” on the influence of other states in France, estimated the Insoumis Aurélien Saintoul. During a press conference in Pas-de-Calais, Marine Le Pen brushed aside the conclusions, which she compared to “a political trial”. “There is nothing, in fact”, she continued, considering that the report was “in the image of the rapporteur, that is to say sectarian, dishonest and completely politicized” .

The far-right leader was auditioned last week by this commission. Under oath, she had challenged any political counterpart in exchange for the Russian loan contracted by the former National Front, while she had refused to condemn the annexation of Crimea by Russia a few months later.

“I formally deny having made any decision whatsoever to please anyone”, she explained, arguing that “the arrival or not of a loan has not changed one iota the opinions which were ours forever”. On the merits, “I considered that freely, the inhabitants of Crimea had expressed themselves by voting to be attached to Russia”, had dropped the president of the RN deputies.

“The report barely talks about the loan”, says Le Pen

On Thursday, she felt that her political opponents “reproach (the RN) for thinking differently” from them, saying that “the report barely speaks of the loan on which the whole campaign of defamation and slander has yet been built, because that all the authorities who were questioned indicated that there was nothing”.

After the leak of the extracts from the report, the deputy EELV Julien Bayou evoked “a fisaco” which “comes back into the teeth” of the RN. “The commission overwhelms the Le Pen clan: it is only justice for these salon patriots, accomplices of the enemies of the Republic”, for his part commented on his Renaissance colleague Sacha Houlié.