Nicolas Bay will file a complaint.
The ex-executive of the National Rally (RN) will sue his former party, which suspended him from his functions because of suspicions of spying on behalf of Éric Zemmour, indicates a source close to the file to the Parisian , confirming information from BFMTV.
The MEP says he wants to file a complaint for defamation.
Nicolas Bay was suspended on Tuesday from "all his responsibilities" within the RN, which accuses him of "sabotage" for having transmitted "strategic and confidential elements" to the rival of Marine Le Pen, which the person concerned immediately denied. .
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"We have had confirmation that Nicolas Bay, taking advantage of his presence in the highest instances of the campaign, has been transmitting strategic and confidential elements for months to our direct competitor Éric Zemmour", wrote the executive office (BE, management) of the RN in a message to movement executives.
“This has allowed the campaign events to be parasitized on several occasions.
This perfectly immoral behavior can be analyzed as real sabotage,” added the party leadership.
Read alsoRallies in Zemmour: the RN and Marine Le Pen cash in … and minimize
Nicolas Bay immediately refuted the accusation on Twitter, deemed "rude".
“Not participating in any instance of campaign management, how could I have known and transmitted so-called
strategic information
!
?
“, he asks.
Barely an hour after asking for a discussion in the Executive Board, I am suspended!
The accusation is crude: not participating in any instance of the campaign management, how could I have known and transmitted so-called "strategic information"!?
https://t.co/91zEn2tcOQ
— Nicolas Bay (@NicolasBay_) February 15, 2022
A few minutes earlier the elected official, who is also a member of the executive office, had demanded in a tweet a "frank explanation" from the party on the recent departures of the movement towards Éric Zemmour.
"The management of the RN cannot continue to ignore the crisis we are going through," he wrote.
Marine Le Pen seemed to anticipate this decision in the middle of the day.
On the sidelines of a trip to the Aisne, she had denounced "real internal sabotage campaigns".
“The slug is slow (..) and sticky”
Without naming Nicolas Bay, the far-right candidate had “asked those who operate the slug strategy to please speed up their departures (…) because the slug is slow but also because it is sticky”.
According to sources close to the former secretary general of the party (2014-2017), the elected official plans to join Éric Zemmour, who is traveling on Saturday to his chosen land in Normandy, where Nicolas Bay is regional councilor.
Several RN elected officials have joined Éric Zemmour in recent weeks, starting with MEPs Jérôme Rivière, Gilbert Collard and Maxette Pirbakas, followed on Sunday by RN senator from Bouches-du-Rhône Stéphane Ravier, as well as several regional advisers.