The report of the inspection mission to Sciences Po, carried out after the resignation of the president of the National Foundation of Political Sciences (FNSP), Olivier Duhamel, is scathing for Frédéric Mion, the director, who has also now resigned.
However, he rejects the hypothesis of the existence of a form of omerta, while at least six other people linked to Sciences Po were aware of the charges of incest weighing on Olivier Duhamel before their revelation by
Le Monde
, the January 4.
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At Sciences Po, the battle for the succession of Frédéric Mion has already begun
The inspectors general report a chronology that reveals several errors of Frédéric Mion in his management of the accusations against Olivier Duhamel.
In 2018, a Sciences Po teacher, the former minister Aurélie Filipetti, made aware of the accusations by relatives of Olivier Duhamel, took the initiative to have a lunch with a research director friend who confirmed the facts to her.
The teacher decides to inform the director of Sciences Po, Frédéric Mion.
The latter
"seems deeply shocked".
The teacher is formal: the principal believed her when she revealed the matter to him.
His certainty is reinforced by the fact that Frédéric Mion would have told him that he understood better why he had observed that the two families present at the funeral of Olivier Duhamel's wife were separated, did not speak to each other and that two separate receptions were organized after the ceremony.
The characteristic of a rumor is in fact generally to include sufficiently precise details, including on the sources of which it is authorized, to give it a character of plausibility.
Frédéric Mion in front of the inspection mission
Frédéric Mion, assures him that he will speak to a member of the board of directors of the National Foundation of Political Sciences (FNSP), also close to Olivier Duhamel.
He will tell the inspectors not to have done it… The personality assures on the contrary to have been informed and to have remained “
incredulous
”… The director then says to have made contact with a friend of Olivier Duhamel, the lawyer Jean Veil.
The latter then assures him that it is only "
rumors
".
In January, after having been warned by Olivier Duhamel of his resignation from all of his functions, when Camille Kouchner's book is due to be published, Frédéric Mion has a telephone exchange with a member of the executive committee of Sciences Po. 'notice that they have each been informed on their own about the
"rumor"
and decide not to report it in order to preserve the school.
Sufficiently precise facts
On the morning of January 5, the director had a good time
expressing “his amazement”
in a letter.
The revelation by the press of his knowledge of the facts since the beginning of 2018 will
"tarnish the good image which he enjoyed until then within the establishment",
underlines the mission, according to which these shortcomings are all the more serious that was informed that the accusations of which Olivier Duhamel "
was the subject in 2018 were known by certain members of the Sciences Po community, which would have justified other steps on his part
".
This revelation was qualified as an
“earthquake”
during certain interviews conducted by the mission.
Most of those interviewed declared themselves “
disappointed
”, even
“betrayed”,
by the director of Sciences Po. Many considered that it was a lie and not an error by omission.
The mission considers that the facts were sufficiently precise to inform the judicial authority
“while being aware of the difficulty of the process”.
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Frédérique Vidal: “Other people linked to Sciences Po could also have spoken, acted, but did nothing”
In his response to the inspectors, Frédéric Mion remains straight in his boots.
He disputes that the precision of the accusations relayed by Aurélie Filipetti and the shock they aroused for him "
would be enough to establish them in fact.
The characteristic of a rumor is in fact generally to include sufficiently precise details, including on the sources from which it authorizes itself, to give it a character of plausibility ”.
When the mission states that, by going to meet a friend of Olivier Duhamel, "
I would have liked to put myself in a position to reclassify a fact into a rumor
", the mission
"engages in an ex post reconstruction, no doubt tempting. now that the materiality of the facts does not seem to be contested but which is a simple process of intention if we look at the circumstances of the time ”.
He maintains that he was convinced, in 2018, that the charges against Olivier Duhamel "
were rumored and that this rumor was unfounded (...) and therefore reserved for them, if not the only possible treatment, at least a treatment that 'was not manifestly unsuitable'.
