FN assistants affair in the European Parliament: the serious inconsistencies in the evidence presented by Nicolas Bay
MEP Nicolas Bay, a former member of the National Front (FN), is at the heart of a new controversy. While he is under investigation in the FN parliamentary assistants affair, he is accused of having provided suspicious documents to justify the work of his former collaborator Timothée Houssin. This affair, which breaks a few weeks before the trial scheduled for September 30, 2024, reveals troubling contradictions.
Inconsistent evidence
Nicolas Bay, to defend the activity of his former assistant Timothée Houssin, now a member of parliament for Eure, submitted press reviews to the courts that were supposed to prove his work between 2014 and 2015. However, glaring inconsistencies have emerged. According to documents consulted by franceinfo and France Télévisions' "Complément d'enquête", some of the press clippings were published in 2018, several years after the period in question. For example, a screenshot of an article in Le Monde, dated 2014, presents elements from after that year, such as references to COP22 in 2016 and the One Planet Summit in 2017, making it impossible to compile it at the alleged time.
Other anomalies appear in the documents provided. Screenshots of articles from BFMTV and Libération contain graphic elements or advertising inserts that did not exist at the time, but were introduced much later. A video from BFM Business, dating from 2018, is highlighted in a capture supposedly made in 2015, and pictograms used by Libération in 2015 could not have appeared in a press review compiled in early 2015.
Nicolas Bay's justifications
Faced with these revelations, Nicolas Bay defends the legitimacy of the documents, stating that these press reviews were indeed produced by Timothée Houssin in 2014-2015, but that they had to be reconstructed by his team in 2018 to fill in the gaps. "There is therefore no false proof of work," he explains, while admitting to having had the formatting redone. However, this explanation contradicts his initial statement to the courts, where he had presented these documents as those produced between 2014 and 2015, without mentioning that they had been modified.
This case calls into question the defence of Nicolas Bay and Timothée Houssin, the latter denying any link with these documents. The justice system, which is investigating the alleged fictitious employment of parliamentary assistants within the FN, could see in these inconsistencies an attempt to manipulate evidence. The European Parliament estimates the damage at 6,8 million euros, and the case should be a central point of the upcoming trial.
As the program "Complément d'enquête" prepares to return to this explosive case on September 19, the revelations continue to put Nicolas Bay in a delicate position.
