Jordan Bardella, head of France's National Rally party, launched a fierce counterattack Tuesday against the investigative outlet Mediapart, after it published an investigation claiming he made antisemitic statements in written exchanges from 2013 to 2015. At a stormy press conference in Paris, Bardella categorically denied the allegations, calling them an operation to destabilize the presidential campaign aimed at "assassinating" him politically and the "beginnings of a total war."
"We are going to wage a battle, and it will be a legal battle," Bardella declared. "I say it again: these statements and positions were never mine. I have been in politics long enough to be examined under a magnifying glass and subjected to meticulous scrutiny, both in my political positions and in my private life, and nothing has ever been found that I could be accused of."
According to the Mediapart report published Monday, the months-long investigation reviewed dozens of written conversations and claimed Bardella had aligned himself with the views of the repeatedly convicted antisemitic activist Alain Soral. One exchange attributed to him read: "All the banks are owned by Jews. The Jew must dominate other peoples, crush them and steal from them."
Bardella argued the operation had been prepared in advance over months, ahead of the presidential campaign, in which Marine Le Pen is the party's candidate and has said Bardella would be her prime minister. "Either Mediapart carried out a covert operation, or this operation was organized from outside and Mediapart itself fell into a trap and was deceived by the hatred it harbors for the National Rally," he said.
Bardella, who filed a defamation complaint against Mediapart on Monday, announced he would also file a complaint for forgery and use of forged documents. "Of course I asked to see the documents, but Mediapart refused to provide me access to them, including through my lawyer in recent hours," he claimed. Describing the material as handwritten, he added: "If there are written elements, I am informing you now that I will file a complaint for forgery."
Le Pen backed him. "We are not going to let ourselves be pushed around," she said. "We are going to counterattack and dismantle this manipulation."
Bardella sharply attacked the outlet's credibility. "I found articles this morning from the last presidential campaign, accusing Eric Zemmour of sexual violence by Mediapart, things that were never proven," he said. "Mediapart has already been convicted in the past for defamation."
At the height of his attack, Bardella added: "That Mediapart would suddenly complain and worry about our Jewish brothers? Frankly, it's suffocating. This outlet is a far-left newspaper, made up of fanatics who will use any means, including the most vile, to prevent us from winning the presidential election."
Bardella also targeted the site's founder, Edwy Plenel: "I will not be lectured and we will not accept moral lessons or instruction in fighting antisemitism from a newspaper whose founder once rejoiced over Islamist terrorist acts against Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics." The claim about Plenel and the 1972 Munich massacre has been leveled at him repeatedly by National Rally figures, and franceinfo has described it as inaccurate.
The allegations drew condemnation across the political spectrum. Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon "formally" condemned the remarks attributed to Bardella as belonging to "conspiracism and the most absurd antisemitism."
