Emmanuel Macron's security aide posed for a selfie holding his gun on a campaign trip during the presidential election in 2017 even though he was not at the time authorised to carry a firearm outside the campaign headquarters, Mediapart can reveal. A photograph shows Alexandre Benalla with the weapon at a restaurant on April 28th, 2017, following a rally held by the centrist candidate. Yet in July this year Benalla, who was sacked as a presidential security aide after he was captured on video beating up a protestor while unlawfully wearing police insignia, insisted in a newspaper interview that he had not carried a weapon during the presidential campaign. “We're not nutters, there was a risk to the candidate's reputation,” Benalla told journalists from Le Monde in July 2018.
Yet the evidence of the photo, published here by Mediapart, and witness evidence suggest that Alexandre Benalla, who was in charge of security for Emmanuel Macron's 2017 presidential campaign, did indeed carry a weapon on at least one occasion.
On Tuesday September 25th, following the original publication of this article, Michel Garrandaux, state prosecutor in Poitiers in western central France, announced a preliminary investigation into the matter.
The episode occurred on April 28th, 2017, between the two rounds of voting in the campaign. Macron had just launched his head-to-head campaign against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in a rally at Châtellerault in western central France. Later he travelled to nearby Poitiers where he was to spend the night at the Hotel Mercure and dine in the adjoining restaurant Les Archives, set in a former chapel that had once served as a local archive department.
The president and his entourage were escorted upstairs where they were given a table in an enclosed alcove. The police officers who were protecting Emmanuel Macron were at a table at the entrance to this room. The members of the candidate's own security detail sat at a table in another alcove in the restaurant.
At the end of the meal at around half past midnight a young waitress who had been looking after the security team's table took a selfie with three members of the group. Among them was Alexandre Benalla, the 'director of safety and security' at Macron's En Marche! movement.
Once the photo had been taken Benalla quietly told the young woman that a “surprise” awaited her in the photo, as she later related it to her boss. It was indeed a surprise, for in the image Alexandre Benalla was holding his firearm. It is clearly a Glock pistol of the type that Benalla was authorised to have at the campaign's headquarters, but absolutely not allowed to carry outside of the HQ.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Concerned by this, but taking it as a joke, the waitress told her boss about Benalla's “surprise” in the photo. She also told the restaurant's director. He asked to see the image and requested her not to publish it. The waitress, who had also taken a selfie with Emmanuel Macron just before he entered the hotel, complied with this request.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
So why was Alexandre Benalla armed on the campaign trip in April 2017, and what authorisation did he have to carry the firearm? During his recent questioning by members of the French Senate commission investigating the Benalla affair, Macron's former security aide said he personally owned a Glock 43, which he had been authorised to carry since October 13th, 2017, as part of his functions at the Élysée. The Paris police authority, the Préfecture de la Police de Paris, has confirmed this authorisation was removed “from the moment Mr Benalla no longer carried out his roles” at the presidency.
Meanwhile in July, after the video affair broke, Alexandre Benalla tried to manage his public image in an interview with Le Monde, accompanied by the fixer and journalist Marc Francelet and Mimi Marchand, head of the celebrity photo agency Bestimage, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron's favoured photographic agency. The Le Monde journalists asked the security aide if he had been armed during the presidential election. Alexandre Benalla told them he had not, and that he had unsuccessfully made an application for authorization to carry a firearm at the end of 2016.
Benalla, 27, also said that he had asked to “obtain and keep weapons in” En Marche!'s headquarters during the election campaign. The request was granted by the Préfecture de la Police de Paris who he said gave him “authorisation to keep weapons, Glock 17s from memory, but only in the HQ”.
“Did you ever go out with it?” asked the journalists. Benalla replied: “No, never. We're not nutters, there was a risk to the candidate's reputation.”
When questioned about the latest development involving the selfie, the Élysée made no comment. And a meeting that Mediapart had arranged with Benalla at an hotel in central Paris on Monday, September 24th, to show him the photo and get his version of events was cancelled at the last minute.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
A few fours earlier, Benalla had texted Mediapart insisting that he had “never had a firearm in his belt outside the campaign HQ, the only people armed were the [personal protection] police officers who accompanied the candidate”. He added: “I never had a photo taken with any weapon during the campaign.” Benalla described the reports of the selfie as “yet more fake news”, suggesting that the photo, which he had not seen, had been altered. “I don't think you have a technical speciality in retouching photos,” said Benalla.
However, in addition to a direct witness from the scene itself, the metadata of the photo indicates that it was indeed taken on April 29th, 2017, at 12.30am by the front camera of an iPhone SE at the following GPS coordinates: 46.582936,0.339956. These correspond to the address of Les Archives restaurant at 14, rue Édouard-Grimaux, Poitiers. Moreover, the error level analysis (ELA) of the photograph is uniform and shows no sign of areas with different compression levels, which could have indicated the image was retouched.
Alexandre Benalla's lawyer, Laurent-Franck Lienard, wrote to Mediapart: “I've other things to do [than commenting on your information].” He added: “What you're going to publish is incorrect. I've had confirmation of that.” But he declined to say what this confirmation was.
When he was questioned by senators last summer, Alexandre Benalla did not himself refer to the election campaign but on several occasions he made remarks that were equivocal. Quizzed about his authorisation to carry a weapon after his arrival at the Élysée, Benalla said that he had “made a request in a personal capacity for authorisation to carry weapons for reasons of personal defence and security”. He also said: “When you're on campaign, you are yourself exposed.”
A number of episodes during that election campaign highlighted the role of Emmanuel Macron's security detail in relation to the question of carrying weapons. According to Le Parisien newspaper, on November 26th, 2016, Alexandre Benalla was caught with a pistol in his scooter but no link between this incident and the campaign was formally established.
According to the leaked series of emails known as Macron Leaks, in March 2017 Emmanuel Macron's campaign team seems to have thought that Benalla already had authorisation to carry firearms. On March 9th, 2017, the deputy campaign treasurer Raphaël Coulhon, wrote: “Alexandre Benalla carries a weapon, it's surely also the case with Christian Guedon and perhaps Vincent Crase [editor's note, other members of the security team]. I don't know if they are armed at the HQ.”
At that time Benalla was making an unusual request: to obtain weapons for the campaign. On March 8th, 2017, he got an estimate for two pistols firing rubber bullets, some rubber bullets, ten tear gas pistols, a Flash-Ball and some riot shields. This request caused awkwardness and astonishment among campaign staff, and angered campaign director Jean-Marie Girier, who later became chief of staff to interior minister Gérard Collomb. “I've just been informed of an order for weapons for the movement. It is very clear that we're not going to buy weapons or a Flash-Ball for the 40 remaining days. I'm surprised that such a request was not referred to us.”
It was obviously not the first time that Alexandre Benalla and his acolyte Vincent Crase tried to obtain weapons. Indeed at one point En Marche!'s first secretary and the coordinator of operations during the campaign, Ludovic Chaker, openly showed his surprise in an email: “We have already acquired several items of equipment over several months without it disturbing anyone.”
The weapons order was not put through. But despite the refusals, Alexandre Benalla and Vincent Crase kept on trying. A new estimate for Flash-Ball equipment was made on March 21st, and this raised new questions among the campaign team, in particular from Grégoire Potton, who was then director of general affairs at En Marche! “They are having another go for their pistols,” he wrote. Potton went on to describe all the unnecessary requests made by the two weapons aficionados. “It's becoming exhausting,” he wrote.
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The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter