[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] When France's president Nicolas Sarkozy and his supermodel wife of two months, Carla Bruni, arrived in Britain for a state visit in March 2008 they were feted as Gallic royalty.
The newlyweds stayed at Windsor Castle and had a private lunch with the Queen and Prince Philip before Sarkozy travelled to Westminster to address both houses of Parliament.
That evening, at a grand banquet in St George's Hall, he raised a toast to 'the brotherhood of the French and British people', while Her Majesty did her own bit for the entente cordiale by bestowing him with an honorary knighthood.
Such a splendid occasion will today seem a very distant memory to the man universally known as 'Sarko'.
This afternoon, the 69-year-old will take his place in the dock at Paris's principal criminal court sporting an electronic tag on his right leg.
Sarkozy, who was convicted in December of trying to bribe a judge, now confronts his most serious charges to date: corruption, illegal campaign financing, benefiting from embezzled public funds and being party to a criminal conspiracy.
In a trial listed to last no less than three months, prosecutors will claim that he accepted money-laundered funds from Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the late dictator of oil-rich Libya, totalling tens of millions of pounds.
The cash reportedly helped finance the 2007 election campaign which swept Sarkozy to power, meaning that his victory will be for ever tainted by the allegation that it was based on dirty money from North Africa.
If found guilty, the man who was nicknamed 'President Bling-Bling', thanks to his penchant for the high life, faces up to a decade in prison.
And his wife could suffer a similar fate. Carla, 57, is accused of being part of a £4 million campaign dubbed 'Operation Save Sarko', a complex and illegal plan to try to keep her husband out of jail.
She has been charged with a range of corruption offences, including 'witness tampering in an organised gang', and her trial is expected to get under way later this year.
This is all a far cry from the days when Sarko was billed as the poster boy of French conservatism and I used to interview him regularly as a journalist and author based in Paris.
He projected himself to me as a Margaret Thatcher-style reformer who would liberalise the French economy, just as the Iron Lady did in Britain in the 1980s.
The pace at which he worked to bring about change earned him the nickname 'Speedy Sarko' – and he didn't hang about when it came to his personal life either.
He became the first French president to divorce his wife while in office. A break-up with Cécilia was always on the cards, given that they were both known for their illicit affairs.
Indeed, Nicolas and Cécilia were both married to other people when they first got together. He was with his first wife, Marie-Dominique, and Cécilia's husband was a French TV chat-show host called Jacques Martin, a kind of French Bruce Forsyth 24 years her senior.
Sarkozy got to know them on their wedding day because, as the mayor of the chichi Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, he conducted the ceremony. Though 29 and married, Sarko later admitted that after laying eyes on the beautiful bride for the first time, he asked himself: 'Why am I marrying this woman to someone else? She is for me.'
The two couples often went on skiing holidays together, and Sarko was rumbled when Marie-Dominique spotted footprints in the snow under Cécilia's window.
Cécilia was briefly France's First Lady when Sarkozy entered the Élysée Palace in 2007, but her days were numbered from the outset as she was known to be seeing a French-Moroccan businessman, while her husband's conquests at the time included a political journalist on the centre-Right daily Le Figaro.
As a result, Sarkozy's five-year term took on the status of a wild soap opera, which reached its climax when he wooed Bruni, an Italian heiress and self-styled 'tamer of men', whose past lovers included multimillionaire celebrities such as Mick Jagger and – it was rumoured – Donald Trump.
Sarko himself revelled in the high life and thought nothing of borrowing super-yachts and private jets from billionaire industrialists, while treating them to lavish meals at Michelin- starred restaurants.
After becoming Sarko's third wife, Carla soon turned into his Marie Antoinette, with presidential accounts revealing that she spent £660 a day on fresh flowers for the Élysée Palace.
With so much energy being expended on luxury living, many suggested that sucking up to the super-wealthy had become Sarkozy's priority – an accusation that was given added credence when the hugely controversial Gaddafi rolled into Paris in December 2007.
Sarko had invited the so-called 'Brother Leader' for a red-carpet state visit and the Libyan despot was even given permission to pitch his tribal tent in ornate presidential gardens by the Champs-Élysées.
This sort of bromance was all the more inappropriate given that Gaddafi was linked to a range of atrocities, including the Lockerbie bombing, which saw 270 people die when a PanAm flight en route to New York went down over Scotland in 1988, and the shooting of Metropolitan police officer Yvonne Fletcher by a gunman inside Libya's London Embassy four years earlier.
Even Sarko's own Human Rights State Secretary, Rama Yade, said France 'was not a doormat' for Gaddafi to 'wipe off the blood of his crimes'. But Sarkozy just shrugged his shoulders, knowing that his presidential immunity would protect him from investigation.
This all changed in May 2012, when he lost his first attempt at re-election to François Hollande. Within a day, Sarkozy's Paris townhouse was raided by the fraud squad – and he and his wife's troubles began in earnest.
For Gaddafi was not the former president's only problem. Sarkozy first came under suspicion of engaging in corrupt dealings when he was accused of accepting envelopes full of cash from the late L'Oréal heiress, Liliane Bettencourt.
While these claims did not stick – his lieutenants took the rap – Sarkozy was sentenced to three years for trying to get classified information about the case against him from a judge.
Telephone taps proved the prosecution case against Sarkozy, who was told he could serve a year with an electronic tag, while the other two were suspended.
He is currently appealing another prison sentence – this time of one year – for using false accounting to disguise illegal overspending in his failed re-election campaign of 2012.
Other ongoing cases include claims that he was involved in Qatargate – the successful but allegedly corrupt plan to stage the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
But it is the Libya affair which will now reignite interest in Sarkozy around the world. It is primarily based on allegations by a Franco-Lebanese businessman called Ziad Takieddine, who once told French media that in 2006-07 he had personally handed over suitcases stuffed with banknotes to Sarkozy and his chief of staff, Claude Guéant (something the latter later denied).
Takieddine said the equivalent of at least £42 million was illegally poured into Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign.
A document signed by Libya's former chief of intelligence, Moussa Koussa, apparently proves the payment. Unfortunately for Sarkozy, like many witnesses from the time, Koussa is alive and well.
So, too, is Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam, who told me he was one of 'numerous Libyans prepared to offer conclusive proof' of massive amounts of cash being given to middle men working for Sarkozy.
There is no love lost between the two men as it was Sarkozy who ordered the French Air Force, supported by Nato allies, to start bombing targets in Libya in March 2011 as a means of protecting civilian lives during the Arab Spring revolt. But regime change was clearly the desired result.
By the time Sarkozy and Britain's then PM, David Cameron, paid a triumphant joint visit to Tripoli in September of that year, the fleeing Gaddafi was close to being beaten to death by a mob.
A key question to be considered by judges is whether Sarko wanted Gaddafi dead because of his potential to produce incriminating evidence. There are claims, admittedly hotly contested, that Gaddafi was killed by agents working directly for the Sarkozy administration.
Sarkozy and Bruni deny all the charges and are determined to prove their innocence. Yet moves are already underway to strip him of his Legion d'Honneur and Order of Merit – France's highest civilian decorations.
As the first French president to be convicted for crimes carried out while in office, he 'has next to no chance of hanging on to them', a senior judicial source in Paris told me.
#1
Evil, treacherous, slimy bastard took money from Gaddafi and then had him whacked. David Cameron and Baraq Obama had to know. They were all in on the "kinetic action" in support of Gadaffi's enemies in Lybia. Well, there's no sympathy for Gadaffi but it goes to show what kind of people Sarkozy, Cameron and Obama are and Lybia has been in chaos ever since. Oh, and don't forget all the African migrants invaders who have been using Lybia as a jumping off spot for their journey across the Mediterranean to Europe ever since Gaddafi's departure. I can't help thinking that was part of the plan.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/07/2025 12:19 Comments ||
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#2
But nothing like this ever happened with Ukrainian cash.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/07/2025 13:02 Comments ||
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#3
Given the track record, I'll go with yes it was.
#5
President Khadaffy had promised to flood Europe with African migrants unless they gave him whatever it was thqt he wanted at the time. So he worked hard to earn being overthrown and assassinated.
[Breitbart] Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) claimed Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that President-elect Donald Trump’s violent rhetoric had not stopped and caused the hammer attack on her husband, Paul.
That’s toxic, child-molesting Canadian David DePape, 42, who in 2022 broke into the house and attacked the elderly Paul Pelosi with a hammer, fracturing his skull in an attempt to force Rep. Nancy Pelosi to come forward and admit on camera that Russiagate was a lie. There was to be a Spooktacular unicorn costume involved, and last spring he was sentenced to 30 years in the federal pen. But this is just a nasty attempt by Ms Pelosi to tar the incoming president.
Partial transcript as follows:
MARGARET BRENNAN: You know, tomorrow morning at the Capitol you and other members of Congress will be there to certify the election win in 2024 of Donald Trump. There’s an unprecedented level of security, in part because of what happened four years ago with the violent attack by his supporters to change the outcome of the last election. Why do you think that so many members of the American public decided that was not disqualifying when it came to reelecting him president?
PELOSI: Well it- again, thank you for the opportunity to talk about this because the denial that they had about the election, which is what they were acting upon, and the denial they’ve had since then about what happened on Jan- January 6 is just appalling. They want to revise history. And they just- they just can’t. But I’m so glad that they have increased security and I’m hoping that this will be very peaceful because- the public knows it. Now to your question, I think- it isn’t, I- I wouldn’t say that the American people disregarded this. They just had a different view as to what was in their interest, economically and the rest. So I don’t- I don’t call this a disregard of January 6. I just call it something that they saw in their interest economically.
BRENNAN: Even just last night at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump was screening a documentary about the 2020 election, claiming his win and trying to talk about the legal challenges he had. There seems to be a continued effort to claim that he won in 2020.
PELOSI: It’s really sad. It really is sad. And I don’t know about the film that he had and the rest, but it’s- it’s almost sick that he would be thinking that in 2020. He’s won the election now, that will be clear- that will be clear, and tomorrow he will be clearly- we will be accepting the results of the Electoral College. So he should be triumphant about that. But to be still trying to fight a fight that he knows he lost is- is really sad.
BRENNAN: You know, the President-elect has said that in the first nine minutes of his new term, he will pardon many of those who participated in January 6. He said he’ll look at it on a case-by-case basis, but in looking back at what happened four years ago, there are recordings, there’s video evidence of what happened. This is personal for you, some of these rioters in your office. chanting your name. One of them, one of the defendants, ‘We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin brain, but we didn’t find her.’ For you, this is personal. So when you hear about pardons, do you think the non-violent attackers deserve to be pardoned?
PELOSI: The non-violent- I think that’s a violent attacker, with the intent–
BRENNAN: – the violence itself.
PELOSI: Yeah–
BRENNAN: –The violent language, you think.
PELOSI: The violent language- yes, the intention. And of course, the intention to attack the Vice President of the United States. Now it didn’t end that day. As you know, he called out to these people to continue their violence, my husband being a victim of all of that, and it still- he still has injuries from that attack. So it just goes on and on. It isn’t something that happens and then it’s over. No, once you are attacked, you have consequences that continue. So I don’t- it’s really a strange person who’s going to be President of the United States, who thinks that it’s okay to pardon people who are engaged in an attack. But let’s- you know, let’s do this. Let’s just say okay to the American people. This is what this is about. Do not be conned by the denial of the election of 2020 and- why would he be saying that? But he- but he is. And then on top of that, the denial of what happened on January 6.
BRENNAN: But some of the 1600 defendants here were really only charged with trespassing. And when you look at the profiles, University of Chicago did a study, half of those who broke into the Capitol were white collar workers. They were small business owners. Didn’t necessarily have a criminal record. When you look at that profile, you said intention. It- it was the intention itself, you think, that needs to be considered more so than the crime. You know that- that it casts the crime itself of trespassing in a different light for you.
PELOSI: Well the President said he would go on a case-by-case basis. So I assume that- that some of those people may not have engaged in the violent activities that some of the others did. Look at this beautiful Capitol, the dome built by Lincoln. Under Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War, they said, don’t build the dome. It takes too much steel and person power, manpower, they said, from the war effort. And he said, no, I have to show the resilience of America. And then under that dome you saw, you saw flags, the flags that, you know, just horrible flags under the dome of Lincoln. And so it was a tragedy, and we cannot be in denial about what it was. If the President is going to go on a case by case basis, I hope he does, and then maybe–
BRENNAN: –Trespassers, you would be comfortable with pardoning?
PELOSI: Well, just depends on how they define what that is. But the- but I know that some of that encouragement and then the follow up that- that so many people were threatened, including me and- and to my home, looking for me and finding my husband, and as I say, who still suffers from head injuries from- on that day. So these things don’t just happen and go away when you have a head injury. But anyway to- to- to see the threat to so many people in elective office, now going beyond me, but so many people in elective office, it shouldn’t be a threat to your family that you have chosen to do public service.
An OVERWHELMING majority of American doesn't believe a word you, or any of the O'Biden Democrat's/RINO's, utters.
Too many of you have been proven to be outright lairs for $$$$.
Even Judge Juan Merchan & DA Bragg can't save those that committed treason and sedition.
Because either Trump or Vance will be in the WH in just 13 days, and the DOJ will be flushed out of its subversive 5th column. And once it is returned to being a Law Enforcement focused agency, and not a Social-Political & $$$ making arm. There will likely be a number of Special Elections.
#3
I am not buying the mythology about Trump inspiring the hammer weirdo that bludgeoned Nancy’s husband. 9 out of 10 crazy attacks seem to be inspired by false characterizations of Trump’s policies by leftists. For example, many of the gay folks are currently frequenting the gun range polishing their skills in expectation of being sent to concentration camps. This is total baloney; the concentration camps will be for comedians and Hollywood celebrities.
With Nancy, though, it’s become hard to discern whether her outrageous fabrications are a sloppy attempt at a wrap up smear or whether the post-menopausal binge drinking has finally taken its toll and she is now hallucinating.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/07/2025 8:36 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
