A parliamentary report points to the RN’s links with Russia, Marine Le Pen is indignant

A “transmission belt” from Russia: the National Front, now National Rally, was again singled out on Thursday for its links with the Kremlin, in a parliamentary report that Marine Le Pen calls “dishonest” and “politicized”. Extracts from this report of the commission of inquiry into foreign interference, written by Renaissance MP Constance Le Grip, leaked on RMC and Mediapart. The Macronist MP 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-Russian bank. .

Frequent contact

The RN had itself launched this parliamentary commission of inquiry, precisely to try to cut short the regular accusations of proximity to Russia. The party “wanted to instrumentalize this commission of inquiry. It’s a fiasco for them and it comes back to them in the teeth”, reacted the ecologist Julien Bayou. Lepenist elected officials, including committee chairman Jean-Philippe Tanguy, voted against the report, which was ultimately adopted by 11 votes to 5, according to a parliamentary source.

Insubordinate France abstained. This 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, estimates the deputy Aurélien Saintoul (LFI). In the version of the report presented to deputies on Thursday – it should not be officially published until next week – Constance Le Grip believes that the link between Russia and the National Front is “anchored in the long term”, but that the “strategy of political and ideological rapprochement” with Moscow tends to “structure and accelerate” from the arrival of Marine Le Pen at the head of the party in 2011.

She recounts the “frequent contacts” between elected FN / RN with Russian officials, as well as the reception of Marine Le Pen by Vladimir Putin on March 24, 2017 in the Kremlin, a few weeks before the first round of the presidential election of 2017.

“Language Elements”

“All his remarks on Crimea, repeated during his hearing by the commission of inquiry, repeat word for word the official language of the Putin regime”, denounces Constance Le Grip. However, she believes that there was a “weakening of the pro-Russian positions of the National Rally and Mrs. Le Pen”, after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, “condemned unequivocally”. During a press conference in the Pas-de-Calais, Marine Le Pen swept aside the conclusions of Constance Le Grip, denouncing “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 chairman of the commission Jean-Philippe Tanguy denounced a “masquerade”. “There is nothing to charge.” Marine Le Pen was heard on May 24 before this commission. Under oath, she had challenged any political counterpart in exchange for the Russian loan contracted by the former National Front. “I formally dispute having made any decision whatsoever to please anyone,” she explained, arguing that “whether or not a loan came in did not change one iota the opinions that were the always ours”.

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. Thursday, she felt that her political opponents “blame (the RN) for thinking differently” from them. She asserts that “the report barely speaks of the loan on which the whole campaign of libel and slander was however built, because all the authorities who were questioned indicated that there was nothing”.

For six months, the commission auditioned a series of personalities, often groping to establish nuances between “interference” and foreign “influences”. Former Prime Minister François Fillon was heard on his presence on the boards of directors of Russian multinationals, which he left after the invasion of Ukraine.

Former BFMTV journalist Rachid M’Barki, dismissed for serious misconduct, came to explain the suspicions of foreign interference in his work on the channel, which he disputes. An investigation has been opened by the courts.