"I have the honor of defending a litigant, one of whose particularities was to be also the President of the Republic."

Jacqueline Laffont, standing in front of the defense bench, thus began her pleading, Wednesday, December 9, in the case of "tapping" in which former President Nicolas Sarkozy is tried for corruption and influence peddling.

"What we expect here in front of you today, at the end of this long judicial journey, is simple justice, strong justice," she says.

"The one who seeks judicial truth, who pronounces the necessary decision. The one who will release Nicolas Sarkozy."

In front of her, the two representatives of the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) who requested, the day before, four years in prison, including two suspended sentences, against Nicolas Sarkozy, an unprecedented fact under the Fifth Republic.

According to the prosecution, the former president did obtain in 2014, via his lawyer Thierry Herzog, information covered by secrecy from the high magistrate Gilbert Azibert about an appeal to the Court of Cassation, in exchange for a "helping hand" for a prestigious position in Monaco.

"I waited for answers, demonstrations, in vain", retorts Me Laffont, in the silence of the 32nd correctional chamber.

The sentence requested "is as severe as the demonstration was weak. However, severity has never created proof."

“I have a fear,” she says.

That "the old responsibilities of Nicolas Sarkozy but also, and perhaps more still, the excesses of the procedures which targeted him, did not condemn" the prosecutors "to persist in a path which they knew disaster".

The case is "built on a foundation of false truths", says the lawyer.

The first, according to her, is the idea that the use of an unofficial line, opened by Thierry Herzog under the name of "Paul Bimuth" to converse with his client, would correspond to the methods of "seasoned delinquent" - a formula used in 2017 by the prosecution in its indictment during the investigation.

But “Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram and other encrypted messaging” are “the Bismuths of 2020!” She slips.

And "among their users", there are "magistrates, police officers ..."

"Plans on the comet"

In front of her, the former head of state, sitting cross-legged, nods regularly.

At his side, Thierry Herzog sometimes nods his head;

Gilbert Azibert listens, impassive.

In the room, many black dresses, journalists and relatives of Nicolas Sarkozy, including his wife Carla Bruni, who came for the first time to the trial.

During his plea of ​​two and a half hours, Me Laffont wants to demonstrate that the three men did not have access to confidential information, but only to documents which were not subject to the secrecy of deliberation.

Gilbert Azibert has also not tried, she pleads, to influence magistrates. 

There is no such thing as a "counterpart": if Nicolas Sarkozy was in Monaco at the start of 2014, it was "pure luck" and he ultimately made no "approach" to the Monegasque authorities, she maintains.

The conversations intercepted between Nicolas Sarkozy and Thierry Herzog, at the heart of the matter?

"Chatter" between "two brothers" who "are making plans on the comet, reading in the coffee grounds", she quips. 

Above all, despite a "debauchery of investigations", "we are swimming in hypotheses", she insists.

In emails, diaries, hearings, phone records, it's "a desert of evidence".

"We bring facts and the floor of hypotheses: the world is upside down", she annoys, denouncing a "subversion of the law".

"We're almost being asked to provide the impossible proof of our innocence."

In the end, "this file is that of a few telephone interceptions between a lawyer and his client".

Wiretapping also "illicit and scandalous", believes Me Laffont, because they violate professional secrecy.

She concludes: "We are light years away from a corruption pact". 

"We must accept to say that justice is fallible, that it could have been wrong, gone astray," she adds.

"Because you are the representatives of this free and impartial justice, you will release Mr. Sarkozy."

Pleadings are scheduled to continue on Thursday.

With AFP

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