In 2004, for example, according to the magazine Le Point, Mr. de Villepin said, “Nicolas doesn’t have the makings of a man of state, because he has no interior labyrinth.” Mr. Sarkozy, he said, lacks “the mystery that is the strength of great men.” With Mr. Sarkozy, he added, “all is there, on the table, for the taking.”

“Some take this for arrogance, aggression,” he added. “In reality, it is weakness.”

The trial also may reveal some of the normally murky relationships between state officials and EADS, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company. A former EADS employee, Imad Lahoud, acknowledged creating the list; an EADS vice president, Jean-Louis Gergorin, is also on trial and is accused of leaking it.

Mr. de Villepin, 55, faces up to five years in jail and about a $66,000 fine if convicted.

Former French President Jacques Chirac has announced that he has given away his beloved dog after it attacked him for a third time.

Sumo, a Maltese terrier, is reported to have bitten him in the stomach in their apartment in the capital, Paris.

Mr Chirac's wife, Bernadette, said the dog had been treated for depression after finding it difficult to come to terms with leaving the Elysee Palace.

The dog is now said to be enjoying life on a farm in the French countryside.

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Having cared for a pair of malteses that belonged to a sister-in-law, in the 1980s — for four bloody years — I know how vicious the male Maltese dog can be, especially he it couldn't access the chocolate lolly machine he smartly knew how to operate. Treated for depression? .. Must have really enjoyed the taste of luxury while being king of the castle at the Elysée palace... my goodness.

French prosecutors have demanded an 18-month suspended sentence for former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin in his smear trial, but no jail time.

Mr de Villepin stands accused of plotting to hurt President Nicolas Sarkozy's chances of winning the 2007 presidential election, which he denies.

He had faced a maximum of five years in jail if convicted.

Mr de Villepin, who was also a government minister at the time, has denied orchestrating any plot.

"Nicolas Sarkozy had promised to hang me on a butcher's hook [and] I see that the promise has been kept," Mr de Villepin was quoted as saying by AFP news agency after the sentencing request which also included a 45,000-euro (£41,000, $67,300) fine.

Dubbed France's trial of the decade, the hearings are due to end on Friday but a verdict is not expected before January.

In his concluding arguments, Mr Sarkozy's lawyer poked fun at the former prime minister's elegancy and vanity, warning one can be handsome, tall and arrogant - and yet still lose the case.

...

Prosecutors argued that while Mr de Villepin had not deliberately taken part in the plot to defame Mr Sarkozy, he had failed to take action to stop the conspiracy and was an "accomplice through silence".

They have also requested sentences for three other defendants.

The case, labelled by the French media as "the trial of the decade", has been unfolding in the same Paris courtroom where Queen Marie Antoinette was sentenced to the guillotine in 1793 by France's revolutionary tribunal.

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"Handsome, tall and arrogant"... versus... droopy, short and arrogant... I see a pattern here... 

See toon at top and wait for the verdict... Personally, I'd say "not guilty"...

Ah... the history of the guillotine... So many innocent sods killed at the whim of self-appointed judges with blood on their mitts...

A Paris court is due to hand down its verdict in the trial of former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.

He is accused of plotting to discredit the then interior minister and now president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

The charges, which Mr de Villepin denies, date back to a judicial investigation in 2004.

It is alleged that he tried to manipulate the corruption investigation to spoil Mr Sarkozy's chances of winning the 2007 election.

After a dramatic, and often explosive, month-long trial, Dominique de Villepin will now find out if he is to be "hanged from a butcher's hook" - as political rival Mr Sarkozy once threatened would be his fate - or whether he will emerge completely exonerated, as he says he expects

see toon at top...

Former French PM Dominique de Villepin has been cleared of plotting to discredit President Nicolas Sarkozy when he was the interior minister.

He had been accused of failing to stop the Clearstream corruption inquiry into Mr Sarkozy, despite knowing the claims against his rival were false.

Both men had been hoping to succeed Jacques Chirac as president in the 2007 election.

Several other defendants in the case were found guilty on various charges.

The judge said there was no proof Mr De Villepin had acted in bad faith, and he was cleared on all four counts of complicity to slander, to use forgeries, dealing in stolen property and breach of trust.

From the NYT

PARIS — French prosecutors will appeal the judgment clearing former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of complicity in an effort to tarnish his rival, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, the Paris state prosecutor announced on Friday.

Mr. de Villepin accused Mr. Sarkozy of interfering with justice and ordering the appeal to pursue a personal vendetta. “This decision is a political decision and what is shows is that Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the republic, prefers to persevere in his relentlessness, in his hatred, instead of assuming the responsibilities of his office,” Mr. de Villepin said.

The prosecution’s appeal, announced by Jean-Claude Marin, is likely to mean a rerun of the long, expensive and confusing trial into charges that Mr. de Villepin conspired with others to use forged documents to link Mr. Sarkozy to secret bank accounts supposedly holding money from arms-sales kickbacks.

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Claims of corrupt links between a French billionaire and top politicians have not just shaken Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency - they have revived deeply held suspicions that something is rotten in the state of France.

"We are in a banana republic and the French can't take it any more," a dissident right-wing MP said last week - even before the latest allegations that L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt had showered right-wing politicians with cash.

Marianne, a left-wing magazine, wrote on its website that under President Sarkozy "all the moral rules required in pursuit of the public interest" had been broken.

Following claims made by Ms Bettencourt's former accountant, prosecutors are now investigating whether the billionaire illegally funded Mr Sarkozy's presidential campaign in 2007.

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see toon at top...

Nicolas Sarkozy denounces "an accumulation of dysfunctions"

"Le Point” [a French conservative magazine] reveals extensive investigations carried out by the National Financial Prosecutor's Office on people in the justice system, in an attempt to identify a possible "mole" in the so-called "wiretapping" [Sarkozy wiretapping a magistrate] case.

The National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) investigated, in vain, between 2014 and 2019, to identify the “mole” who would have informed Nicolas Sarkozy and his lawyer Thierry Herzog that they were being tapped, according to the weekly magazine Le Point, Thursday June 25.

According to the magazine, investigators from the Central Office for Combating Corruption and Financial and Fiscal Offences (Oclciff) went through the detailed telephone bills records of many Paris courts operators and their collaborators, among which Eric Dupond-Moretti, Jean Veil, Jacqueline Laffont or Hervé Témime, but also one magistrate, and the fixed phone lines of the PNF [to source out the “mole” within]. Some have even been geolocated.

The existence of this preliminary investigation, parallel to the judicial information on the so-called “wiretapping” case, was known and denounced for a long time by the defense of Mr. Sarkozy, but not its content nor the extent of the surveillance of all these lawyers. Opened in March 2014 for “violation of professional secrecy”, it was finally closed without action in December 2019, after almost six years, according to Le Point.

"Requesting” the communication records is legally possible in a preliminary investigation without the law imposing obligations to inform the president of the justice system," commented the PNF succinctly.

"Bad snooping methods"

The people whose “phone records” were investigated by the PNF, all have the distinction of having been in telephone contact with Mr. Herzog on February 25, 2014. He and Mr. Sarkozy are suspected of having learned that day that they had been tapped in a case which brought a trial against them for "corruption", "trading in influence" and "violation of professional secrecy". The PNF's aim was to find the "mole" through which this information about being taped would have passed.

The revelation of the extent of the investigations undertaken aroused strong reactions among the lawyers concerned. Dupond-Moretti spoke to Agence France-Presse (AFP) of "barbouzes (cheap snoops) methods" and announced on LCI a law suit. "It shows the desperate aspect of the procedure, they searched to the end of the world for evidence that does not exist, all this to lead to a resultant failure and hide it from the defense," reacted Paul-Albert Iweins, lawyer for Mr. Herzog, to the AFP.

The President of Paris courts, lawyer Olivier Cousi, announced to the AFP "a legal action on behalf of the Paris Bar Association". He said that he had asked the famous prosecutor Henri Leclerc "to please think, procedurally, what action to take", which could go through "criminal action" or "civil liability of the State".

Mr. Sarkozy, for his part, denounced an “incredible accumulation of shortcomings and dysfunctions”. "In reaction to the revelations from Le Point, I only express one request: respect the rule of law," said the former president of the Republic on Twitter, who is to be tried in the [original] wiretapping case from November 23 to December 10.

The former seal-keeper, Rachida Dati, said on RTL that the PNF "has become like a drugstore." She recalled some judges' "reluctance" when it was created "because they feared it would be an armed wing of political justice". For the deputy boss LR Damien Abad, "at least a general inspection is needed to shed light on these dysfunctions and a commission of inquiry, to the Assembly, on the PNF would be appropriate".

On the left, the leader of the PS (Socialist Party), Olivier Faure, affirmed that "the rule of law accepts that any litigant — Nicolas Sarkozy included — is to be respected in their prerogatives and in their rights", without any "special specific treatment”.

In this case, Mr. Sarkozy is suspected of having tried to obtain secret information from the former magistrate at the High Court of Cassation, Gilbert Azibert, in early 2014, through Mr. Herzog, about the Bettencourt affair, in exchange for a job in Monaco.

Read more:

https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2020/06/25/affaire-des-ecoutes-des-avocats-epies-par-le-pnf-nicolas-sarkozy-denonce-une-accumulation-de-dysfonctionnements_6044184_823448.html

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Translation by Jules Letambour...

Aude Buresi and Marc Sommerer, the investigating judges who replaced Judge Serge Tournaire in the inquiry into the funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign, have indicted him for a fourth time, on 16 October 2020.

In 2011, after the overthrow of the authorities of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and country’s occupation by NATO, Thierry Meyssan reported having organized in Tripoli a cell in charge of tracking evidence of various embezzlements on the part of French politicians [1].

According to Thierry Meyssan, there is no doubt that Nicolas Sarkozy has committed serious criminal offenses, yet it is not acceptable to impose a sentence on him alone and not prosecute his rival, Ségolène Royal, whose campaign was also funded by Libya. Either justice is applied equally, or it becomes a political instrument. Finally, it is necessary to take an in-depth look into the funding of political campaigns which, despite the new legislative arsenal put in place, still require foreign money.

This affair should not be seen as an attempt at corruption by the Libyan state (which it also is), but above all as a malfunctioning of the French democratic system which must imperatively be redressed.

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article211245.html

Gaddafi knew too much... You know the rest...