Guillaume L’Huillier is “an activist”a real one. “I put up my first posters in 1997”he said on Wednesday at the bar, at the trial of suspicions of fictitious employment of parliamentary assistants of MEPs from the National Rally. So when we ask him to do something… ” I do “.
Officially from 2009, Guillaume L’Huillier is “Jean-Marie Le Pen’s chief of staff”president of the National Front (renamed RN). But at the helm, he immediately nuances his muffled, often barely audible voice: “it’s essentially a title in relation to the media… journalists prefer to speak to a chief of staff than to a parliamentary assistant”.
Who decided to give him this title? He hesitates. “I don’t know exactly anymore… Anyway, I’m an activist, I’m told to do that, I do it”. He catches up: “Unless it poses legal problems”.
In fact, during the period which interests the court (2004-2016), he was a parliamentary assistant to Bruno Gollnisch – for whom he had already worked -, then to Marine Le Pen, before returning to Bruno Gollnisch – “by personal preference”explains Guillaume L’Huillier, 48 years old, bald head, trimmed beard, tight in his blue jacket over beige pants.
The prosecution is surprised. Evokes emails from party administrators who talk about “transfer L’Huillier to BG from July”. Or this other message in which he claims to be “already on Bruno Gollnisch’s envelope”. And again the salary table of the National Front, where Guillaume L’Huillier appears in the column “Not paid by the FN” – with the mention « Europe ».
Of “administrative”he sweeps away. But concrete proof of his work for Bruno Gollnisch (the contracts concerning Marine Le Pen will be discussed later) he does not have any.
“Shadow Man”
“Not a draft, not a trace on a hard drive or a USB key? »insists prosecutor Nicolas Barret.
“I keep almost nothing”replies, sorry, Guillaume L’Huillier, recalling that the first contracts in question date back to “20 years”. « Militant » and a good soldier, he worked for Jean-Marie Le Pen in his free time – “an hour and a half a day” maximum, he swears -, especially since the patriarch was quickly replaced by his daughter at the head of the party (2011), before being excluded in 2015.
The prosecution is still surprised: the other collaborators of Jean-Marie Le Pen did not know that Guillaume L’Huillier worked for Europe, the latter asked Jean-Marie Le Pen for vacation, calling him “the leader” in his private messages – which almost never mentioned Bruno Gollnisch.
The latter provided “whole suitcases” of “evidence” of the work of Guillaume L’Huillier, but ” none “ does not concern the period which interests the court, argues the prosecution. To justify their telephone relations, the former number 2 of the FN suggests “ask the PTT for the list of communications”.
Guillaume L’Huillier, who is today a parliamentary assistant to an RN deputy as he points out several times, is exasperated by repeating what he “has been silent for three hours”: He is a “shadow man” – the words of a defense lawyer. So obviously his “name does not appear” on these notes, these speeches, this “nationality code” which he prepared for Bruno Gollnisch.
Sketch of Marine Le Pen at the Paris courthouse, October 1, 2024 / Benoit PEYRUCQ / AFP/Archives
“Obviously, obviously! »fulminate in agreement behind him, ulcerated and with great gestures, Marine Le Pen and Bruno Gollnisch – almost the only ones of the 25 ex-MEPs and frontist parliamentary assistants accused in the trial to have made the trip.
Marine Le Pen, who did not hesitate to say on the sidelines of the hearing that she found the court particularly burdensome, asked to speak. “We no longer know how to defend ourselves”chants the leader of the far right, recalling that the European Parliament has never intervened or alerted a member of a possible risk of accusations of embezzlement of public funds. And said again: “Everything we did, we had the right to do”.
