Nicolas Bay’s inconsistencies to prove his collaborator’s work

At the bottom of each page, an inscription which must nevertheless bear witness to serious work.Press review by T. Houssin – Parliamentary assistant to N. Bay”. Timothée Houssin and Nicolas Bay: the first became an RN deputy of the National Assembly in 2022, the second is still elected to the European Parliament, having spent some time under the Zemmourist banner of Reconquête. Both are among the 27 people indicted in the case of the parliamentary assistants of the National Front (FN), whose trial is due to take place from Monday, September 30. In this case, the courts suspect the FN (which has since become the National Rally) of having hired, as assistants to MEPs, collaborators who in reality worked for the party. The European Parliament has estimated the damage at 6.8 million euros. The accused dispute the facts.

In collaboration with the program “Complément d’enquête”, which returns to this affair on September 19 on France 2, franceinfo analyzed press reviews signed by Timothée Houssin, supposed to prove the activity of the parliamentary assistant between 2014 and 2015. Our investigation reveals that they were edited and prepared, at least in part, in 2018. An element that escaped the vigilance of the investigators.

To understand these revelations, we need to go back in time. In September 2018, Nicolas Bay was questioned by the investigating judge in charge of the case about the activity of his assistant Timothée Houssin. The latter, then aged 26, was hired by Brussels from July 2014 to March 2015, for a monthly salary of 2,300 euros.I dispute the facts as a whole.claims the MEP, according to documents consulted by franceinfo. Mr. Houssin was my assistant, he worked well as my parliamentary assistant”The elected official did not come empty-handed. As evidence, he gave investigators copies of social media posts, press releases to which his assistant allegedly contributed, as well as press reviews that he claims were “made by Timothée Houssin between September 2014 and February 2015”.

These press reviews are collected in a 112-page document. It contains a total of 67 articles from national and local newspapers on European, energy or political issues, published between 1 September 2014 and 27 February 2015. These are sometimes press cuttings from printed newspapers, sometimes screenshots of online articles, published on the websites of the Figaroof Release or even WorldLogically, these captures and scans are supposed to have been made in March 2015 at the latest, when Timothée Houssin was still employed.

Yet some were actually made a few years later. The most glaring example is an article in the World on Europe’s climate ambitions. The article is indeed dated October 24, 2014. But in the header of the page, the menu bar of the website of the World refers to later events: COP22, which dates from November 2016, and the One Planet Summit, the first edition of which was held in December 2017. Events which, naturally, did not appear in the Planet section of the Worldat the time of publication of this article in 2014.

Another inconsistency in the file submitted to the courts by Nicolas Bay is an article from the BFMTV website, published on 25 November 2014. A seemingly innocuous clue slipped in between two paragraphs: a box marked “Selected for you” invites the Internet user to click on other content, a programme on the public deficit in France. We found this video. It is a BFM Business programme broadcast on 30 March 2018. The box linking to this video could therefore not have existed in 2015, and this article could not have been saved as is before the end of March 2018. That is, six months before Nicolas Bay submitted it to the courts.

Another example, this time taken from the site of Release. Timothée Houssin’s press review lists a long interview on the fight against terrorism in Europe, published on January 16, 2015, in the columns of the newspaper. A notable layout element for this screenshot: each question from the journalist is preceded by a quotation mark drawn in a large square. However, according to our information, this graphic element, designed by the Datagif agency, specialized in the creation of websites and applications, did not yet exist at the beginning of 2015.

Questioned by “Complément d’enquête”, the director of Datagif, Gaëtan Duchateau, searched through his archives: the file where these red quotation marks were drawn dates from March 2015. “In June, we finalized the graphic mockups. And readers discovered this at the beginning of September 2015, when it went online [sur le site de Libération]. So in January 2015, this quotation mark did not exist at all, and the article should have had the old layout”he explains. As evidenced by other screenshots, available on the Internet Archive, the article by Release actually looked completely different in January 2015. So it was saved between September 2015 and September 2018.

Other examples extend the list, with articles from The Tribunefrom the Europe 1 website… Arrangement of the photograph, size of the text, appearance of the icons for sharing the article on social networks… So many clues that do not pass the game of the seven differences between Nicolas Bay’s document and the articles as they should have appeared on the alleged dates. Franceinfo and “Complément d’enquête” have identified about ten articles with this kind of inconsistency. Moreover, the majority of this content is composed of scans of printed articles, which do not allow for precise dating.

When and by whom was this press review actually compiled? Initially questioned by “Complément d’enquête”, the interested parties said they knew nothing about this document. But a few days before the publication of our article, the two elected officials sent new answers to franceinfo. Timothée Houssin, who repeats that he worked well for Nicolas Bay, denies any link with this document. “I was not the one who submitted the documents in the case file to the judge and I never had any knowledge of them. These press reviews do not correspond, in form, to my work. I did not produce these documents as they were, neither during my contract with Nicolas Bay, nor afterwards.”decides the RN deputy.

This argument contradicts Nicolas Bay’s version. He claims that, in order to prepare his interrogation, and so that the judge “can grasp nature [du] work” by Timothée Houssin, “[s]our team, in 2018, therefore compiled these press articles (from the time but some were missing and were therefore found on the web and reprinted). There is therefore no false proof of work”, he says, explaining that he had the formatting redone, but that he relied on articles compiled by Timothée Houssin between 2014 and 2015. The MEP goes further. “I have never claimed to the courts or to anyone else that these documents, in the form provided to the judge, dated from 2014.”

In his exchange with the judge, dated September 2018 and consulted by franceinfo, he nevertheless presented this as “press reviews carried out by Timothée Houssin between September 2014 and February 2015”, without specifying that they had been modified or compiled a few months earlier. According to the report of the exchange, the investigators then asked him: “How do you explain that Mr. Houssin was not able to give us the information that you are giving me today?”The MEP replied: “Regarding the press reviews, he would give them to me on my desk, most often in paper format. I found them in my office as a member of parliament in Brussels.”

Until now, the judges have kept these press reviews as one of the only potential evidence of the parliamentary assistant’s activity. In their order issued on December 8, 2023, they wrote that in the defense of the two indicted persons, “it is not excluded that Timothée Houssin could have had a residual activity for Nicolas Bay of press review and writing in view of the elements produced”.