The wind picks up. It bards. It squeaks. It beats severe. Wick in battle, rebellious verb and unruly gaze, Juan Branco faces a storm that he helped to stir up. Here is this 30-year-old lawyer swept away in the controversy surrounding the disclosure of an intimate video by Benjamin Griveaux, private images that led to the resignation of the candidate LREM for mayor of Paris.
Who is behind this broadcast? Piotr Pavlenski, Russian follower of performances, takes care to take sole responsibility for this act. His current partner, Alexandra de Taddeo, for his part, recognized a relationship with the politician, a relationship that earned him to be the recipient of this immodest sequence. Pavlenski and de Taddeo are indicted for "invasion of privacy" and "distribution without the person's consent of a recording of words or images of a sexual nature".
The avocado is in the eye of the storm. Proof of the troubles to come, two police officers, a fake couple of lovers in a car, are hiding at the foot of his office-apartment in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. The lawyer was beaten up. He knows he is listening. The investigators peeled his phone. Branco, close to the couple, is a key witness, who could be heard soon. "They can go and be seen so that I can betray professional secrecy!" protests the troublemaker. Do we have lawyers testify against their clients now? Are we in the Inquisition? Either it is a political cabal or a panic of power. And to add: "I am not the third man. How did I become the subject of this case? "
"He tells me he has a site called Pornopolitics, I advise him to blur the images"
He did not steal these suspicions, so much did he love provocation. On February 14, he said: "Given the elements in our possession, it is rather Benjamin Griveaux who is exposed to legal proceedings. Because you can imagine that, if he resigned so quickly, it was because he was aware that it was not just that. It sounds like a reversal of roles between victim and perpetrator.
Today, the rebel lawyer nuances his words. “When I say 'we', it is an 'we' of argument. I stand in front of the client symbolically. I cover it, it is a defense strategy and not a coaction. Juan Branco strongly contests being part of the sextape plot. "In mid-December, Pavlenski, whom I met a short time before during a conference at the Sorbonne organized by Alexandra de Taddeo, told me that he had secretly worked out a great action, without telling me what specifically, says Juan Branco. And, in the process, he asked me if I agreed to accompany him as a lawyer. I expect Pavlensky-style action like in Russia. Then he contacted me at the end of January, I believe, to tell me that this action is almost ready. Very secretly, he arrives with his computer. He tells me he has a website called Pornopolitics. He talks about letters, various photos. I advise him to blur the images. "
The great work of the Russian artist? "Create a database on the pornographic relationship to politics. He wants to provoke a societal shift with a discourse: politics has become pornographic, let us reveal the pornography of politics. It is an intellectually audible speech. "
"I refused to participate in the dissemination of his action"
Then we go squarely under the belt. A piece of turgid flesh emerges, one hand but no face, and the name Griveaux. “Piotr Pavlenski asks me if I want to participate in the dissemination of his action. He also proposed the same thing to Maxime Nicolle (note: figure of yellow vests) with whom we drank glasses. I refused, choosing to remain strictly in my role as lawyer. In addition, I was afraid that it was false, that Pavlenski would be manipulated by those around him or that it would be a move by Trafalgar aimed at discrediting me. Until Griveaux resigns, I have a strong doubt that it is about him on the video. "
One thing is certain: Juan Branco knows what will happen before the online release. He provides legal advice to Piotr Pavlenski, warning him, he says, of an invasion of privacy. He questions the Russian: "Are the videos true? Do you know that there is a legal risk? That culturally speaking, it is not going to be accepted at all? Juan Branco takes refuge behind "professional secrecy" to avoid saying more.
"A symptom of the impoverishment of society"
The young lawyer has in any case sent Pavlenski names of journalists who may be interested in the case, which could put him in difficulty. He himself took the initiative to contact a former magazine manager on February 1 to ask if Pavlenski could contact her. “It was at the request of Piotr, justifies the thirty-something. By providing him with these contacts, I did not go beyond my role because he remained in an artistic role. In my mind, I was directing him to an information verifier. "
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But, for the first time, in Juan Branco's speech, this Torquemada of Macronie appears a nuance. Not a distancing as the leftists say but a careful distance between the broadcasting of the videos and him. Unpacking is not the debate. "I wondered, he admits, if this action was interesting and had political relevance". And? The answer is no, doubly no.
“It is a symptom of society becoming wild. Personally, I would never have broadcast these videos. These are not my methods. Those who must be questioned about complicity, even concealment, are those who relayed the video, such as Joachim Son Forget (Editor's note: deputy ex LREM) . They are fully aware of what they are doing when they are doing it. "
"I have sextapes like everyone else"
In the past, Juan Branco himself made public the links between two figures from LREM, Gabriel Attal and Stéphane Séjourné. "It has nothing to do with it," he maintains. It is not intimate. I related how an official affair had political implications. They are PACS, it is registered in their declaration of interest. The story that was told of them did not correspond to reality. "
But, tirelessly, Juan Branco transfers responsibility to the hated political adversary: Macronia and its supposed arrogance. As if he was looking for a justification for Pavlensky's actions. In law, we would speak of an excuse of provocation which absolves or limits responsibilities. And Branco to slip, falsely naive: "I have sextapes like everyone else. But if they come out, I don't think I would disengage. "
