French Electoral Commission bans publication of huge Macron hack

The French Election Control Commission released a statement threatening legal as well as criminal action against anyone who publishes the content of the leaks.

“The Commission therefore asks the media, and websites in particular, not to report on the content of the data (of the Macron leak), recalling that the dissemination of false information is liable to fall within the scope of the law, in particular criminal law”. The threat is being made even prior to the authentication of the alleged Macron documents.

The hack is said to contain contractual documents and related photos. Wikileaks is currently in the process of verifying the leaked documents. Macron’s campaign maintains that some of the leaked files are fake.

But prohibiting information relevant to the public good from being disseminated, might also be problematic.

WikiLeaks tweeted a link to the hack containing “many tens of thousands emails, photos, attachments up to April 24, 2017” – while noting it was not responsible for the leak itself.

France’s presidential electoral authority, the CNCCEP, has ordered media not to publish contents of Emmanuel Macron’s leaked campaign emails which could swing the election in favour of his rival, Marine Le Pen.

Journalists may now face criminal charges for publishing or republishing the material, under laws that came into effect at midnight.

Fears that the hack called EMLEAKS could swing the ballot, are rising. The Independent noted that French election rules also forbid Macron or his team from commenting on or denying any allegations.

The Macron party, En Marche! which abbreviated bears the same initials as its leader, issued a statement in which it said: “The seriousness of this event is certain and we shall not tolerate the vital interests of democracy being put at risk.”

Macron’s team said they were “victims of a massive and coordinated hack” on Friday evening, adding that it had “given rise to the diffusion on social media of various internal information”.

A campaign blackout starting minutes after the Macron team announcement of the leak, also means that Le Pen’s campaign cannot legally comment on the leak either.

Article L49 of the French electoral code states it is illegal to “broadcast to the public by any means of electronic communication anything that could be considered electoral propaganda” or for anyone to “bring to public attention any new element of electoral argument at a time when the target has no possibility to provide a useful response before the end of the election campaign”.

The Macron campaign had previously complained about “Russians” subjecting them to cyber attacks without providing substantiating evidence for their claims. Officials had identified a hacking group operating in Ukraine that “may have Russian links”.

In February, a spokesman for Macron, Benjamin Griveaux, accused the Kremlin of mounting a “smear campaign” via state media.

The allegations of a cyber attack came after similar complaints of “Russian interference” in the US, with Macron previously pointing fingers at Russia Today and Sputnik for spreading “fake news” to damage his campaign. Both Russian media outlets have announced legal action against Macron over his allegations.

Margarita Simonyan, the editor of both RT and Sputnik, said: “We are tired of their lies. We will sue them.”

While Macron has complained about “Russian interference”, the public endorsement of Macron by former US president Barack Obama, is not seen as problematic.

The Russian President said during a press conference with German chancellor Angela Merkel: “We never interfere in other countries’ politics and we want no one to meddle in ours. Unfortunately, we have seen the opposite happening for years. We have seen attempts to influence political processes in Russia through the so-called NGOs and directly.

“Realising the futility of such efforts, it has never occurred to us to interfere.”

The favourite for the election, François Fillon, was eliminated immediately from the first round on the basis of accusations of nepotism and corruption that had surfaced online which led to legal charges against him, but none of these accusations has so far been verified.

No single publication devoted to Marine

Florian Philippot, deputy leader of the National Front, tweeted: “Will Macronleaks teach us something that investigative journalism has deliberately killed?”

All the French regional as well as national daily newspapers, without exception, denounce the “danger” of Le Pen and call for votes for Macron in order to block her accession to power. Numbed by the hysteria, voters march towards the ballot box to vote as they have been ordered to do by a biased media.

According to sociologist Jean-Claude Pays, the vulgarity of most accusations against Le Pen, supported by the French media without a single exception, has provoked “an effect of stupefaction in the French public”.

Macron has even accused Le Pen of having supported the Prussian invasion in 1870 and the German aggression in 1914 in front of a cheering audience. Le Pen was born in 1968.

In a video widely broadcast by TV channels and on the Internet, Macron waves the commemorative medal of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, a cemetery for 45 000 combatants from the First World War, and accuses Marine Le Pen and her friends, who are “hiding in the Château de Montretout”, of sharing the same ideology as the historical aggressor, of wanting to push France into an identical war. Whipped into hysteria, he shouts: “Not that! Not that! Not that!”

The Château de Montretout, where Marine Le Pen was brought up as a girl, was taken by the Prussians during the siege of Paris, in… 1870. The link between the war of 1870, the First World War, and the Front National, is absurd, suggesting Le Pen is about to betray France and will soon be responsible for the millions of dead from the wars of 1870 and the First World War.

As far as crude propaganda goes, Macron is stopping at nothing to advance his globalist project.