Eric Coquerel counter-attacks. The deputy of La France insoumise, elected Thursday, June 30, president of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, denounces in a forum at the JDD on Sunday “unfounded rumors” concerning his behavior towards women.
“I am making this forum to affirm that I have never exercised physical or psychological violence or coercion to obtain a report, which characterizes the gateway to criminal behavior in the field of gender-based and sexual violence”, he wrote in the Journal du Dimanche, saying he was “forced to speak for the first time”.
The LFI committee seized, Eric Coquerel plans to file a complaint for defamation
Sophie Tissier, a figure of the “yellow vests” movement, announced on Twitter having sent a report by e-mail to the committee against sexual violence of La France insoumise. In this message, she denounces “unacceptable behavior” on the part of MP Éric Coquerel. These facts would have occurred in 2014, during an evening in Grenoble. The rebellious MP assured on BFMTV do not rule out filing a complaint for defamation against Sophie Tissier.
The committee had defended Thursday the deputy Eric Coquerel, elected chairman of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, against “rumors about his behavior with women”, ensuring that he had never received a report about him. “Several editorial offices have carried out journalistic investigations”, underlines the deputy, a very close to the leader of LFI Jean-Luc Mélenchon: “Nothing has ever come out for lack of having found a testimony which could be akin to criminal behavior, has a fortiori criminal. This rumor was however revived by an investigation into sexism at LFI in the newspaper chat in September 2018. The journalist evokes two brief anonymous testimonies about a deputy also anonymous guilty of ‘slippages, bordering on harassment’. I was not overly worried at the time of this article which was said to concern me, because it was obviously sloppy”.
Therefore, writes Eric Coquerel, “how to react to a rumor that is not based on any complaint, no report to the internal unit of LFI, despite frequent calls and press releases from LFI to be able to do so, no public testimony, no results of serious journalistic investigation in more than five years but of which it is explained that only the silence of LFI and its refusal to carry out an investigation would explain it? »
The deputy also explains that he felt compelled to express himself, for the first time publicly, by an intervention on RTL this week by the author and activist Rokhaya Diallo. The latter had mentioned, without further details, “sources within LFI” questioning the behavior of Coquerel.