Macron Aides Face Legal Scrutiny in Expanding Benalla Scandal

The Senate has just this Thursday referred three new cases to the courts in the Benalla affair. New legal proceedings concerning three close associates of French President Emmanuel Macron: Secretary General Alexis Kohler, Emmanuel Macron’s right-hand man, Chief of Staff Patrick Strzoda and General Lionel Lavergne.

According to the Orange.fr website: "The Senate has referred the cases of three of Emmanuel Macron’s close associates to the courts. The upper house suspects Alexis Kohler and Lionel Lavergne of having ’withheld a significant part of the truth’ and Patrick Strzoda of perjury, during their hearings before the Senate inquiry commission on Alexandre Benalla".

In this sense, the Valeursactuelles website goes so far as to title its article on the same subject as follows: "Benalla affair: war has been declared between the Senate and the Elysée". And indeed, it was not a unilateral attack but there was a response, according to the site, which relays information published on Parismatch: "The Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe, ’has decided not to go’, this Thursday, March 21, to the question time session in the Senate, as a sign of protest against the recent decision of the upper house of Parliament".

Moreover, the Senate did not stop there. The President of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand, in a press release, expressed his intention "not to participate" in the conference he was to attend with the LREM president of the Senate, Gérard Larcher.

As for Benalla, he was very recently spotted in Marrakech, at the Nikki Beach, smoking shisha and drinking champagne by the pool.