Macron shoulders responsibility for scandal over aide’s attack on protester

PARIS — Lawmakers from President Emmanuel Macron’s party quoted him in tweets on Tuesday night as saying he takes full responsibility in a scandal surrounding a former security chief seen in a video beating a protester.

The tweets show photos of Macron at an unannounced gathering on Tuesday evening with ministers and parliament members making his first remarks since the scandal broke six days ago.

Aurore Berge, a parliamentary spokeswoman for Macron’s centrist party, tweeted quotes of the president saying that “the only one responsible is me. They can come and get me”.

Legislator Bruno Fuchs quoted Macron as saying the May Day action by the security aide, Alexandre Benalla, “was for me a betrayal”.

Macron has been confronted with a major political crisis since the revelation last week by the newspaper Le Monde that the man seen in an internet video acting violently with protesters was a top security aide for the president.

Benalla has been charged with assault and impersonating a police officer, while also illegally receiving police surveillance footage in a bid to claim his actions were justified.

A parliamentary inquiry is underway to learn why Benalla wasn’t fired in May, with government ministers, the police chief and top officials at the presidential palace testifying.

The head of the police oversight body, Marie-France Moneger-Guyomarc’h, also testified on Tuesday that police had no reason to believe the person in the Benalla video was not an officer and that the violence “was not illegitimate (if ) carried out by police officers”.

The scandal comes as Macron’s ratings slump, with 60 percent reporting an unfavorable opinion in an Ipsos poll published on Tuesday — a record low for the centrist.

‘Benallagate’

Opposition lawmakers, however, said Macron still needs to answer questions over what has been dubbed “Benallagate”, including reports that the former chief of security during his 2017 campaign enjoyed a series of perks unusual for someone of his rank.

“It’s not among his LREM deputies, among his own, that the president should discuss this, but before the French people,” Gerard Larcher, the Senate president, told French daily Le Figaro.

“My feeling is that our fellow citizens are a bit stunned by this. The government should be careful,” he said.

Several cabinet members and security chiefs were to appear before the panels Wednesday, including a Senate hearing for office director Patrick Strzoda.

Strzoda had already told lawmakers on Tuesday that he decided there weren’t enough elements to justify turning Benalla over to prosecutors, not least because no criminal complaint had been filed against him.

Macron’s chief of staff Alexis Kohler will appear before the Senate committee on Thursday.