Jacques Serais with AFP / Photo credit: THOMAS SAMSON / AFP
modified to
7:44 p.m., November 16, 2023
The defense of Éric Dupond-Moretti began to plead Thursday morning before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) to request the release of the Minister of Justice, against whom the prosecution demanded a one-year prison sentence on Wednesday suspended. The prosecutor general of the Court of Cassation Rémy Heitz, who brings the accusation at trial, maintained on Wednesday his “conviction” that the Minister of Justice was guilty of the offense of “illegal taking of interest”.
The decision will be made on November 29
The unprecedented trial of Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti, tried since November 6 before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) in Paris, ended Thursday around 2 p.m., and the decision was put under advisement at November 29. Before suspending the hearing, and while his defense had just pleaded for his release, the court gave the floor to Eric-Dupond Moretti one last time. “I have nothing to add,” the minister said.
“These prosecutions make no sense” and the prosecution “builds its offenses” on “approximations”, retorted Me Rémi Lorrain, asking the three professional magistrates and 12 parliamentarians who make up the CJR “to relax” Éric Dupond-Moretti . The prosecution claimed the day before that the minister had ignored the “alerts”, “orange, red flashing lights”, and “crossed a line that he should never have crossed”: opening, as minister, administrative investigations targeting three magistrates whom he had criticized when he was a lawyer.
“Éric Dupond-Moretti had nothing to shake”
The first case concerns three magistrates from the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) who had examined the telephone bills of Éric Dupond-Moretti when he was a lawyer in the so-called “Bismuth” corruption case, linked to former president Nicolas Sarkozy – “barbouze methods”, he estimated, shortly before his surprise appointment at Place Vendôme in July 2020. The second case concerns a former investigating judge, to whom he had attributed “cowboy” methods and against whom he had filed a complaint on behalf of a client for violation of the confidentiality of the instruction.
“What did Éric Dupond-Moretti do?”, Mr Rémi Lorrain got carried away, affirming once again that the minister had only followed the “recommendations” of his services on procedures launched by his predecessor. “From start to finish” he “is absent from the decision-making process”, “never gave instructions” “Becoming minister, “Éric Dupond-Moretti had nothing to shake” from these affairs, “he did not take revenge!”, he protests again.
Sitting at his table in the courtroom, Éric Dupond-Moretti listens attentively, mimes indignation or amazement at the same time as his lawyer pleads. “Eric Dupond-Moretti’s thesis of revenge does not hold up for a second,” repeats Rémy Lorrain. “No one” among those who worked alongside him in the ministry “heard of any desire for revenge.” After the pleadings of his second lawyer, Me Jacqueline Laffont, Éric Dupond-Moretti will speak one last time. The decision will be deliberated.