AfD-Schmidt records legal success

District Councilor Manfred Schmidt can book a legal victory in the affair surrounding his party's electoral lists in the 2020 local elections: The Munich II public prosecutor's office has closed its investigations against Baldham.

District - The end of the investigation was confirmed by a spokeswoman for the public prosecutor's office for the Ebersberger Zeitung on request.

The investigations had triggered allegations against the now 83-year-old, according to which he was citizens without their knowledge as an AfD candidate

for the election of the district council and the Vaterstetten municipal council.

The investigators had decided against bringing charges because "no evidence could be given".

The interviewed witnesses were therefore unable to confirm the allegations of coercion and forgery of documents.

Schmidt says: "Everything is just a campaign"

Schmidt sees himself confirmed by the decision that the allegations against him were a campaign.

“I didn't force anyone or ripped them off,” he said to EZ on the phone.

Each and every one of them knew what they had signed, and when they recruited the candidates they had drawn their attention to the fact that they should read the forms carefully.

That sounded different when the phone rang several times at EZ in February 2020.

On the line: Vaterstetten citizens who, to their own surprise, found themselves on the AfD lists.

They had been duped, there was no question of running, the candidates said unwillingly.

In addition, they were not invited to their own nomination meeting, although this is required by the electoral law.

14 of 60 candidates on the AfD district council list and several on the municipal council list had already withdrawn their candidacy when the affair became known.

When the allegations came to the public through the reports of the Ebersberger Zeitung, the headwind for Manfred Schmidt swelled to a storm of indignation, far beyond the district boundaries.

In particular, the fact that one of those affected found her husband, a 74-year-old Alzheimer's patient, and her 96-year-old mother on the list, caused outrage.

Schmidt renewed his position that he did not know anything about the man's dementia.

This is countered by a previously written email by Schmidt, which was read out at a council meeting in Vaterstetten, in which the AfD man mentions the man's disease by name.

No legal consequences

Manfred Schmidt apparently no longer has to fear any legal consequences from the affair - “consequently”, as he says.

Conversely, his complaint had also been discontinued for betrayal of secrets.

Schmidt had accused administrative staff of having illegally disclosed information about the AfD candidates to the public.

The party expulsion process has not yet been completed

The AfD's party exclusion proceedings against their district council members, however, have not yet been completed.

It is currently not being dealt with publicly by the party's federal arbitration court, said AfD member of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Wiehle, who, as the provisional district chairman at the time, had initiated the exclusion.

While Schmidt has already announced that he will fight for his AfD membership with a civil suit before the Berlin Higher Regional Court, Wiehle did not immediately comment on the suspended investigation.

But one has to distinguish between offenses against criminal law and offenses against good morals.

The fact that he pushed ahead with the application for expulsion from the party speaks for itself.

The AfD parliamentary group in the district council is apparently a little more relaxed about morality: Despite the exclusion from the party and the ongoing investigations by the public prosecutor's office at the time, they made Schmidt their boss - before the election, the then district chairman Wiehle had ruled out that Schmidt would even be part of the parliamentary group would be included.