A first for a France-based keeper of the seals: the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) on Monday ordered a trial against Eric Dupond-Moretti, who is accused of using his position to settle scores with judges he had faced as Attorney lodged an objection.
His lawyers immediately announced that they would appeal to the Court of Cassation.
“As we unfortunately expected, this is a dismissal judgment that was issued by the referral committee (editor’s note: the CJR). We immediately lodged an appeal in cassation against this judgement. This judgment no longer exists,” announced Me Christophe Ingrain and Rémi Lorrain at the exit of the CJR in Paris, in the absence of the Minister of Justice.
“It is now up to the Plenary Assembly of the Court of Cassation to deal with this file and in particular to decide on the numerous irregularities that have affected these files for two years, at the forefront of which is the atypical positioning as unfair and biased by the Attorney General of the Court of Cassation”, François Molins, added Me Rémi Lorrain.
His dismissal will inevitably raise the question of whether the former criminal defense attorney will remain in power.
“I have always said that I have my legitimacy from the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister and only from them,” he said on Tuesday.
Arrived at nine o’clock at the CJR, whose judicial branch has the sole authority to try members of the government for felonies or misdemeanors in the performance of their mandate, the two lawyers emerged thirty minutes later after being served the notice of “illegal misappropriation” from Eric Dupond-Moretti.
The former tenor of the legal profession, who was appointed head of the Chancellery in the summer of 2020 and reappointed to that post after Emmanuel Macron was re-elected in May, was indicted by the CJR in July 2021.
Eric Dupond-Moretti is accused of using his position as head of the Justice Department to settle scores with judges he had trouble with as a lawyer, which he denies.
Complaints from judges’ unions and the anti-corruption association Anticor, which had denounced two conflicts of interest since he arrived at the Chancellery, led to the launch of a judicial investigation in January 2021.