Alexandra de Taddeo and Piotr Pavlenski have been on trial since Wednesday June 28 for having broadcast intimate videos of former Secretary of State Benjamin Griveaux in February 2020. They defended an “artistic” project…
February 14, 2020. A scandal shakes the Republic in motion and power, a few weeks before crucial municipal elections for Emmanuel Macron. Benjamin Griveaux, the LREM candidate for mayor of Paris and loyal among the faithful of the Head of State, announces the withdrawal of his candidacy for the municipal elections after the broadcast of intimate videos attributed to him. Documents of a sexual nature, initially sent in 2018 to a 29-year-old young woman, Alexandra de Taddeo, then publicly posted on February 12, 2020 on a website and very widely relayed on social networks.
A Russian activist, Piotr Pavlenski, quickly presents himself as the broadcaster of the stolen videos. He will explain in particular the reasons for his gesture on CNN and in Le Monde. The artist and performer, who obtained political asylum in France in 2017, has always claimed a political gesture and artistic freedom.
Benjamin Griveaux has meanwhile filed a complaint against X in this case, and the Paris prosecutor’s office will quickly open an investigation for “invasion of privacy”. The investigations were entrusted to the personal crime repression brigade.
This is the element that prompted Benjamin Griveaux to announce his withdrawal from the race for mayor of Paris. On Thursday February 13, 2020, in the evening, rumors of an intimate video attributed to the candidate for mayor of Paris began to flourish on social networks.
This is a site called Pornopolitique.com which, the day before, posted the said video, showing a man masturbating. The file would have been provided to him by a “source” having had a consented relationship with Benjamin Griveaux and with whom he would have exchanged these intimate images in 2018, while he was still government spokesperson.
Behind the website, whose domain name was reserved in November 2019 and which had published little or nothing since, we find the Russian artist Piotr Pavlenski. This refugee in France has been known for several years for spectacular and trashy performances against the repression of the Kremlin and more generally the established order.
Piotr Pavlenski himself claimed to have broadcast this video to “denounce the hypocrisy” of Benjamin Griveaux, in particular on family issues. On his site Pornopolitique.com, he declared: “the pornographic content disseminated is not […] not linked to the personality nor to the political opinions of civil servants and political representatives but to their hypocrisy, which has become the usual basis of political careerism and the cause of the monstrous obscurantism in which our society has become bogged down”.
Very quickly, the “sex tape” went viral. While circulating in Facebook groups for several days, including a Facebook group called “Yellow Vest”, from February 12, 2020, it spread with the publication of Piotr Pavlenski. A blog article hosted on the Mediapart site and entitled “Doctor Griveaux or Mister Grivois, new DSK affair” is published and remains online for a few minutes before being deleted.
In an investigation of his precise route, The world indicates that the video also appeared on the “18-25” forum of the Jeuxvideo.com site. But the video really comes to light after Joachim Son-Forget, deputy for French people living abroad and former member of LREM, posted the link to the article on Twitter. He has since justified himself by claiming to defend “people who are publicly lynched”.
After the publication of the video, Juan Branco, a lawyer close to the far left and yellow vests, claimed on point having been consulted by Piotr Pavlenski. Contacted by Le Monde, he indicated that he could defend the latter in the event of a legal outcome, but he has since been removed from the defense of the Russian activist by the prosecution.
The recipient of these messages from Benjamin Griveaux will also be quickly identified: it is Alexandra de Taddeo, the companion of Piotr Pavlenski, a young woman of 29 years old at the time of the events who would have followed law studies in Paris to become a lawyer. The latter was first placed in police custody “on charges of invasion of privacy and dissemination without the consent of the person of images of a sexual nature”, by the Paris prosecutor’s office. Piotr Pavlenski was also taken into custody in connection with the private video affair.
Piotr Pavlenski will initially ensure that the young woman had nothing to do with this affair. He will indeed claim to have “stolen” the videos in the computer of the 29-year-old student. “I looked at everything, I found it interesting. So I stole them with a USB key”, he detailed to World.
Piotr Pavlenski had already discussed with his partner the possibility of publishing Benjamin Griveaux’s videos in October 2019. Alexandra de Taddeo would then have refused. “She didn’t know what I had found and that I had taken this video. It was published and it started to be broadcast. After that, she couldn’t do anything anymore,” he added on CNN.
“In announcing my candidacy for mayor of Paris, I knew the harshness of the political fight”, began Benjamin Griveaux in his brief statement recorded on Friday February 14, 2020, in a small committee at AFP headquarters and broadcast by BFM Paris.
“For more than a year, my family and I have been subjected to defamatory statements, lies, rumours, anonymous attacks, the revelation of stolen private conversations as well as death threats. This torrent of mud has affected me and especially hurt those I love,” he said.
“As if that weren’t enough, yesterday a new stage was reached. A website and social networks relayed despicable attacks involving my privacy. My family does not deserve this. No one, deep down, should never suffer this violence”, continued the former minister before concluding: “As far as I am concerned, I am not ready to expose my family and me more to us when all shots are now allowed. This goes too far. . I have decided to withdraw my candidacy for the Parisian municipal election. This decision is costing me but my priorities are very clear. It is first of all my family, you will have understood that”. The Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn will announce her candidacy for mayor of Paris a few days later, finally suffering a stinging defeat against the socialist Anne Hidalgo.
Designated as head of the list of the majority party the Republic on the March for the municipal elections in Paris, before giving up on Friday February 14, 2020, Benjamin Griveaux is a “walker” from the start. Son of a notary and a lawyer mother, a graduate of Sciences Po Paris and HEC, in 2000 he joined the “rocardo-strauss-kahnien” circles as they are called. The world.
Benjamin Griveaux becomes national delegate of the “Left in Europe” movement created by Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Michel Rocard. In 2006, he was part of the “DSK” campaign team alongside other well-known figures at LREM today: Cédric O, Stanislas Guerini, Sibeth Ndiaye and Ismaël Emelin. He then became a municipal councilor for Chalon-sur-Saône in 2008, but resigned in 2015 despite his re-election. He will also briefly be general counsel under the presidency of Arnaud Montebourg. After a stint in the office of Health Minister Marisol Touraine in 2012, he was briefly director of communications and public affairs at Unibail-Rodamco from 2014 to October 2016.
At the end of 2015, Benjamin Griveaux got closer to Emmanuel Macron through Ismaël Emelin. With the Minister of the Economy at the time, he found former Strauss-Kahnians and was one of the architects of the creation of En Marche, of which he was the main spokesperson before the presidential campaign. Having become very close to Emmanuel Macron, Benjamin Griveaux is one of the architects of the latter’s victory in the 2017 presidential election.
Elected in the 5th district of Paris during the legislative elections of 2017, before joining the second government of Edouard Philippe a month later as spokesperson, Benjamin Griveaux will very quickly display his ambitions for the capital. On March 27, 2019, he will resign from his ministerial functions in order to prepare his candidacy for the municipal elections, with the result that we know.
Benjamin Griveaux shares the life of Julia Minkowski, a lawyer, with whom he has been married for several years and has three children aged 3 months, 5 years and 7 years old at the time of the case. Within the firm Temime, this recognized lawyer, granddaughter of the pediatrician Alexandre Minkowski, niece of the conductor Marc Minkowski, notably worked in the Crédit Lyonnais file, for the defense of Bernard Tapie. Julia Minkowski also contributed to the development of the justice component of Emmanuel Macron’s program for the 2017 presidential election.
The choice of the former candidate for mayor of Paris to withdraw to protect his family is not surprising. Benjamin Griveaux has always stressed that he intends to put his family first. “They did not make this choice which is mine (…) With my wife, obviously, we speak, when I told her that I intended to embark on the Parisian countryside, it was obviously with his support, otherwise it is not possible”, explained the former candidate for mayor of Paris to Télé Loisirs a few weeks before the scandal.