PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron suffered a setback yesterday when one of his closest lieutenants, Benjamin Griveaux, pulled out of the race to become mayor of Paris after it was alleged he sent sexual images to a woman who is not his wife.
“I have decided to withdraw my candidacy from the municipal election,” Griveaux said in a video statement.
He said he and his family had been subjected to months of anonymous statements defaming him, and threats to disclose private conversations stolen from him.
A new level had been reached on Thursday with “websites and social networks carrying ignoble attacks about my private life,” he said.
Conversations
A Russian dissident artist, Pyotr Pavlensky, published screenshots of an online chat which he said was between Griveaux and a woman who is not his wife and exposed his “hypocrisy”.
The chat included a video showing a man’s genitals. Griveaux has not disputed that he sent the messages.
Griveaux, 42, is one of the “Macron boys” – the clique that helped propel the former investment banker to the Elysee Palace.
He started in politics as an adviser to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund who in 2011 was charged with sexual assault on a maid in a New York hotel. Prosecutors dropped the charges, and Strauss-Kahn said the sex was consensual. Griveaux was central to Macron’s bid to control the French capital and build a local power base for his party in mayoral elections next month.