2023-11-06 05:30:01
The Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, visits the new Troyes-Lavau prison, October 25, 2023. FRANCOIS NASCIMBENI / AFP
The moment promises to be solemn: the trial of Eric Dupond-Moretti must open on Monday November 6 before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), and, for the first time, a minister in office, particularly a minister of justice, will appear before its judges, for “illegal taking of interests”, for theoretically ten days. The Keeper of the Seals is suspected of having sought revenge on four magistrates with whom he had had trouble when he was a lawyer; the Court has sole jurisdiction to judge crimes and offenses committed by members of the government in the exercise of their function.
Read also: Dupond-Moretti trial: why the Minister of Justice is accused of “illegal taking of interests”
An exceptional, even exceptional, jurisdiction – there is regular talk of reforming it, but this would require revising the Constitution – the CJR is made up of three magistrates from the Court of Cassation and twelve parliamentarians, six deputies and six senators, elected by their peers. There will be people around the president in the first chamber of the court of appeal – the one which judged Philippe Pétain in 1945. With the magistrates and substitute parliamentarians, thirty people in total.
The accusation will be brought by the highest prosecutor, Rémy Heitz, the attorney general at the Court of Cassation, newly appointed on July 2 by the President of the Republic, assisted by the attorney general Philippe Lagauche, who followed all instruction. Everyone is walking on eggshells: Rémy Heitz, certainly statutorily independent, must judge his minister, look after the future and not disavow his predecessor; As for the twenty-two witnesses cited by the public prosecutor’s office, many are, or have been, stationed at the chancellery.
Several warnings
Eric Dupond-Moretti also risks big: if he is convicted – he faces up to five years of imprisonment and a fine of 500,000 euros – he will have to leave Place Vendôme, Elisabeth Borne, the Prime Minister, the confirmed. But, during the trial, he intends to continue to exercise his mandate, he will simply be excused in the council of ministers. He is defended by two lawyers, Mes Rémi Lorrain, associated with the Maisonneuve law firm, and Jacqueline Laffont, one of the advisers of the former President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy and a long-time friend, who replaced Christophe Ingrain, dismissed this summer.
Also read the investigation (2022): Article reserved for our subscribers Dupond-Moretti and the judges: at the sources of masterful hatred
The Keeper of the Seals is accused of having yielded “to vindictiveness” with regard to four magistrates against whom he had fought before becoming minister. The investigating committee of the CJR considered that he should have “to refrain from knowing the situation of magistrates whose actions he had, as a lawyer, criticized, especially since he has the power of appointment and sanction over them”. She thus accuses him, despite several warnings from his services, the unions, and the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life, of conflicts of interest in two separate cases.
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