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

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credits: Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP 15:42 pm, June 01, 2023

The National Front, now the 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 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 in which the party took out a loan from a Czecho-Russian bank.

>> READ ALSO – The strategy of the executive to push Marine Le Pen to the fault

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

RN's "guilty flippancy" towards Russia

The report shows "at least a guilty flippancy" of the RN with regard to Russia, but it is not "exhaustive" on the influence of other states in France, said the Insoumise Aurélien Saintoul. At a press conference in Pas-de-Calais, Marine Le Pen brushed off the conclusions 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 heard last week by this committee. Under oath, she had rejected any political quid pro quo 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 taken any decision whatsoever to please anyone," she explained, arguing that "the arrival or not of a loan has not changed one iota the opinions that were ours since always". On the substance, "I considered that freely, the inhabitants of Crimea had expressed themselves by the vote to be attached to Russia," had dropped the president of the RN deputies.

>> READ ALSO – Elisabeth Borne attacks the RN "heir of Pétain", without forgetting LFI

"The report barely talks about the loan," Le Pen said.

On Thursday, she said that her political opponents "accuse (the RN) of thinking differently" from them, saying that "the report barely speaks of the loan on which the entire campaign of defamation and slander was built, because all the authorities who were questioned indicated that there was nothing".

After the leak of the extracts of the report, the deputy EELV Julien Bayou evoked "a fisaco" that "returns in the teeth" of the RN. "The commission overwhelms the Le Pen clan: it is only justice for these armchair patriots, accomplices of the enemies of the Republic," commented his Renaissance colleague Sacha Houlié.