Jordan Bardella counterattacks after Mediapart revelations on anti-Semitic messages attributed to 2013

Rely on what they see as the flaws in the case to counterattack. This is how Jordan Bardella and several RN executives chose to respond after Mediapart published late Thursday afternoon screenshots of anti-Semitic messages dating from 2013 that the news site attributes to the head of the flame party. Documents from a Messenger conversation obtained from Meta and authenticated by a bailiff, according to the media, intended to support the accusations made in the first part of its investigation. Without shaking the main person concerned, who once again disputes these allegations.

“The pseudo-evidence from Mediapart has finally come out: crude montages, obscure screenshots that can be manipulated, repeating vile comments that I obviously never made,” the nationalist MEP mocks on X. In other words: “These “proofs” are therefore not proof and will not hold up for a second in court,” insists Jordan Bardella, who judges, upon reading this second salvo, that the “so-called “investigation” is already collapsing.” And that it would result from a “gross plot” of which “the French will be the judges”.

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From then on, Jordan Bardella said he had “instructed (his) lawyer to file a complaint for forgery and use of forgery”, as he had promised as a warning on CNews at the start of the week. A procedure which is added to that already initiated for defamation. Because the thirty-year-old, in the eye of the storm since the first revelations on Monday, does not intend to sit idly by. “For days, our political adversaries and dozens of media outlets have smeared France's leading party, and seriously damaged my honor, on the basis of gossip broadcast by a fiercely anti-RN media outlet,” he thunders, in a new arrow fired against the site co-founded by Edwy Plenel. Already on Wednesday, the president of the RN claimed to face “the most despicable accusation that has ever targeted him” and denounced “unfair, unjust and deceptive treatment”.

The RN stands together

Far from isolating Marine Le Pen's heir apparent, the affair has closed ranks around him, even if it brings the party back to its old "frontist" demons, long nourished by the numerous anti-Semitic and racist excesses of the founder of the FN who became RN, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The troops are therefore united, including elected officials reputed to be more “Marinists” than “Bardellists”. Like Sébastien Chenu: the deputy from the North believes that “the masks are falling”, since Mediapart would continue to rely on “unspeakable sources”, before calling to let justice decide. Like Jean-Philippe Tanguy, on France 5, for whom, in the second part of the investigation, “nothing proves” the authorship of the messages attributed to Jordan Bardella.

Any other reading from Édouard Philippe. Contrary to the caution he displayed Thursday morning on TF1, refusing to “comment” for lack of evidence while indicating that the facts would be “serious and serious” if they were proven, the boss of Horizons is coming out of his reserve. And now considers that it is “almost established” that Jordan Bardella made “scandalously anti-Semitic” comments. “It will be up to him and the political party of which he is a part to draw the consequences,” warned the presidential candidate, scathing towards him: “With the extremes, when you chase away the natural, it always ends up galloping back.”