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Juan Branco
Branco in 2019
Born	1989 (age 34–35) Estepona, Andalusia, Spain
Nationality	French, Spanish
Education	Sciences Po Audit student at École normale supérieure (Paris)
Occupation	Lawyer
Father	Paulo Branco

Juan Branco (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxwan ˈbɾaŋko], French: [bʁɑ̃ko], Portuguese: [ˈbɾɐ̃ko]), born in 1989 in Estepona, is a French-Spanish political activist, writer and lawyer.

He gained notoriety in 2019 with his book Crépuscule, critical of French President Emmanuel Macron, and in early 2020, with his involvement in the Griveaux affair. He has been a supporter of the Yellow vests movement.

Early life

Born in Spain in 1989, in the municipality of Estepona, Andalusia, Juan Branco is the son of Portuguese film producer Paulo Branco and Spanish psychoanalyst Dolores López. He grew up in Andalusia and then in Paris, between the 5th and 6th arrondissements. He has two sisters and a brother.. He was naturalized French in 2010.

He lived a "golden childhood" in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood of Paris, being acquainted with celebrities like Catherine Deneuve and Raoul Ruiz.

Education

After an education spent in public schools, Branco studied at the École alsacienne, a private establishment in the 6th arrondissement. In his own words, "one can reproduce and socialize there without fear of being contaminated by bad company". He also claimed to have "great contempt for the conformism of all these heirs". He used social networks to comment on the physique of his comrades; his comrade Gabriel Attal complained of his actions to the management of the establishment.

In 2007, he joined Sciences Po Paris (IEP) where he relaunched the film club and was noticed by the director of the establishment, Richard Descoings, who entrusted him with the mission of taking photos to feed his Facebook account. Years after he was asked by his widow to deliver a eulogy on behalf of the school's students at his funeral, he said, "All the flattery was instrumental, aimed at absorbing me to make me serve the system". During his studies at the IEP, he obtained a DEUG in philosophy and law co-accredited by the University of Paris 1 in 2009, following which he was admitted to the literature and languages ​​department of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS Ulm) the same year, and finished his bachelor's degree from the IEP the following year.

He obtained an M1 in modern literature in 2011, followed by an M2 in political philosophy and a Masters in public affairs in 2012, accredited by the University of Paris IV and the IEP of Paris respectively. The following year, he obtained an M2 in geopolitics co-accredited by the ENS Ulm and the University of Paris 1, and became an audit student of the ENS.

Under the guidance of legal historian Jean-Louis Halpérin, he began a doctorate in international law and legal philosophy. His thesis, defended at the ENS Ulm eight months later, gave him the title of doctor of law. His work on the International Criminal Court was rewarded in 2015 with one of the thesis prizes from the Varenne University Institute — which became the Louis-Joinet Prize — in the “international criminal justice” category.

This doctorate obtained in eight months allows him to join a regional training center for the profession of lawyer (CRFPA) without going through the very selective entrance exam to the law school.

In 2019, L'Express reported that he mentioned on his curriculum vitae "in charge of a seminar at the École Normale Supérieure", which he was not. Branco replied to the weekly, "It changes absolutely nothing in the facts, whether it is organized by a student or not."

Career

He worked as an external collaborator at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a year.

Employed in the French department of Yale University between 2013 and 2014, he became a visiting scholar at Yale Law School, where he collaborated with the Yale Journal of International Law. In 2015, he was recruited as Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law, whose director is Hélène Ruiz-Fabri, one of the rapporteurs of his thesis. He earns eight thousand euros in salary there and specifies on this subject: “I did not know what to do with it. It was a bit unsettling”.

At the same time, after collaborating with the organization as a volunteer for a few months, he joined the defense team of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange under the direction of Baltasar Garzón. As a legal adviser, he then represented the organization publicly, notably during the National Security Agency espionage revelations in 2015, relating to the presidents of the French Republic as well as to its large companies. He participated in diplomatic negotiations to obtain the right of asylum for Assange, which the Élysée eventually refused. Described by Le Supplément as "the man in the shadows" of Assange, responsible in particular for procedures with the United Nations and relations with certain States, he described on numerous occasions the risks inherent in working with WikiLeaks, particularly in contact with intelligence agencies, and defined the organization as a "World Library of Power Devices".

Political activity

As a student, Branco actively supported former right-wing Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, a friend of his mother's.

Afterwards he supported The Greens (France) and then went on to participate in the campaign of future President François Hollande (Socialist Party). He worked several months during the campaign for future French Minister of Culture and Communications Aurélie Filippetti, who refused him a position of chief of staff after the election.

Branco then joined the left-wing populist party La France Insoumise. He stood in the 2017 French legislative election for Seine-Saint-Denis's 12th constituency where he placed fourth. His former running mate stated that Branco "wanted to win a parliamentary seat and abandoned the party after the loss". After he was refused a sufficiently high spot on the electoral list of La France Insoumise in the 2019 European Parliament election in France his support for the party ended and he called for an abstention in the election.

He became a vocal supporter of the Yellow vests movement, some of whose members he also represented in court, including Maxime Nicolle, and a critic of President Emmanuel Macron thereafter.

In 2018 he outed the homosexuality of his former classmate and government spokesman Gabriel Attal on Twitter.

Crépuscule

Branco's book Crépuscule, in which he criticized Emmanuel Macron, was published in 2019. It was commercially successful but received mostly negative reviews in the French press.

Legal advice and representations

In 2015, Branco was the legal advisor to WikiLeaks and met with Julian Assange, trying to help obtain asylum for Assange in France.

Branco passed the bar in 2017 and had three clients in the next two years, including his father, and was receiving welfare assistance (Revenu de solidarité active) during that time.

He represented his father and prevailed against Terry Gilliam in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote case.

In 2021, he represented one of the defendants in the Mila affair cyberbullying case.

Griveaux affair

In February 2020 it was reported that he was representing the Russian activist Petr Pavlensky, both before and after the latter leaked sexually explicit videos depicting Benjamin Griveaux, then a candidate in the mayoral elections for Paris. Multiple sources claim that Branco was involved in the leak, a criminal offense under French law. This was denied by Branco.

Pavlensky was arrested on 14 February 2020 for stabbing two people during a New Year's Eve party organized by Branco and his girlfriend in a Paris flat owned by the latters' parents.

After Branco was hired by Pavlensky as his defense attorney, the chairman of the French Bar Association opened an inquiry into the appropriateness of the defense in light of Branco's involvement in the affair. No conflict of interest was found, but Branco was advised to step down as Pavlensky's defense attorney nonetheless due to a "lack of distance". Branco originally followed the advice but later reverted his decision and joined the defense of Pavlensky once more. Branco went on to request a psychological evaluation of Griveaux, the victim of the alleged crime, whose defense called the request "grotesque and hateful". The request was denied by the examining magistrate as it was deemed "not useful for the establishment of the truth".

In October 2020, it was reported that disciplinary proceedings were being pursued against Branco by the Paris Bar Association following his involvement in the affair.

Controversial claims

Branco claimed to have been chief of staff of the French Minister of Culture and Communications Aurélie Filippetti, but Filippetti denied it. She later stated that he "demanded to be hired as her chief of staff at age 22", that he "completely lost it when he was refused the position", and told her that he recorded their conversations. She described him as "dangerous, intelligent and skillful" and as "megalomaniacal, a compulsive liar and very, very manipulative".

In 2016 he solicited Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the group directly involved in the attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015 (in which 130 people were killed and 683 others were injured), proposing in a letter to help in his legal defense and claiming to be representing Julian Assange. As he was not admitted to the bar and therefore not legally permitted to practice law at the time, one of the French lawyers representing Abdeslam characterized Brancos actions as attempted fraud.

In 2018, L'Express stated that Branco was making false statements on his CV and elsewhere. After Branco defended himself from this accusation, L'Express provided additional information to prove their claims. Branco claimed to have been a lecturer at the École normale supérieure, but the school told L'Express that it refers to an exercise for students that every student of the school had to do. He also claimed "never having created a Skyblog", but L'Express provided captures of the blog he co-administered during his high-school years. The blog invited the pupils to rate the girls in the school according to their physique and use the word "blondasse" ("blondie").

Branco has previously claimed that he worked as a "special assistant" to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Asked for a clarification by the French journal GQ France, the Court responded that Branco ""claims to have been the assistant of the Prosecutor (..) while in reality he was an intern (...) and then worked at the OTP Public Information Unit".

In 2018, he accused peacekeeping forces of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) of having been involved in a massacre in the city of Bangui - an accusation denied by MINUSCA - he was expelled from the country. He had been tasked as an independent expert for the United Nations with developing a strategy for investigations conducted by the Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic. He was fired by the UN less than a week after his mission started.

Ongoing justice investigation for rape

In April 2021, a 20-year-old woman accused Branco of abusing her. She told the police she had felt threatened and coerced by Branco into a sexual relationship while she was under the influence of a drug they had taken together. Branco claimed the relation was consensual. He has been put under official criminal investigation on the count of rape in November 2021.

Self-promotion on Misplaced Pages

Branco has been editing his own Misplaced Pages pages for many years, attempting to embellish his biography. He makes his edits under multiple identities, using what are known as sockpuppets. He has also edited articles of others to "settle accounts" by portraying them in a negative light.

He once wrote a threatening letter to the employer of another Misplaced Pages editor, pretending to be a "Misplaced Pages administrator" named "Addas Karadas" and threatening legal action.

Bibliography

• Réponses à Hadopi (Paris, Capricci, 2011, ISBN 978-2918040255)
• De l'affaire Katanga au contrat social global: Un regard sur la Cour pénale internationale (Paris, 2015, LGDJ-IUV, 2015, ISBN 978-2370320582)
• L'ordre et le monde (Paris, Fayard, 2016, ISBN 978-2213680880), edited by Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin
• D'après une image de Daesh (Paris, Lignes, 2017, ISBN 978-2-35526-164-0)
• Contre Macron (Edition Divergence, 2019, ISBN 979-1097088125)
• Crépuscule (Paris, Au Diable Vauvert, 2019) ISBN 979-1030702606
• Assange, l'antisouverain (Paris, Éditions du Cerf, 2020) ISBN 978-2204133074

References

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2. Santucci, Françoise-Marie. "Le joueur des chèques". Libération (in French). Retrieved 2023-05-02.
3. Endeweld 2013
4. ^ "Juan Branco, itinéraire d'un enfant gâté devenu activiste sans scrupule" (in French). 18 February 2020. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
5. Mariel Primois Bizot, Au Diable Vauvert, October 3, 2019, ISBN  979-10-307-0304-7, p. 128
6. ^ "Des grandes écoles aux "gilets jaunes" en passant par WikiLeaks : qui est Juan Branco, l'avocat proche de Piotr Pavlenski ?". Franceinfo (in French). 2019-05-07. Retrieved 2020-06-30.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
7. ^ "Juan Branco, le radical chic qui veut la peau de la Macronie". 11 February 2019.
8. ^ "Juan Branco | Yale University - Academia.edu". yale-academia-edu.translate.goog. Retrieved 2023-05-04.
9. "L'annuaire | a-Ulm". www-archicubes-ens-fr.translate.goog. Retrieved 2023-05-04.
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16. "International Law Journal". International Law Journal. Retrieved 2023-05-05.
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36. 2015 NSA Espionnage revelations
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43. "Piotr Pavlenski : Dans les coulisses de sa soirée du 31 décembre 2019 à Paris". 29 February 2020.
44. "Le bâtonnier de Paris a demandé à Branco de ne pas défendre Pavlenski". lepoint.fr (in French). 2020-02-19. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
45. "Branco redevient avocat de Pavlenski et demande une expertise psychiatrique de Griveaux". LExpress.fr (in French). 2020-03-05. Retrieved 2020-03-05.
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48. "Quand Juan Branco écrivait à Salah Abdeslam". valeursactuelles.com. 22 February 2020. Retrieved 22 February 2020..
49. "Juan Branco a écrit une lettre à Salah Abdeslam en 2016 pour le conseiller". rtl.fr. 22 February 2020. Retrieved 23 February 2020..
50. ""C'est un exercice illégal" : quand il sollicite le terroriste Abdeslam, Juan Branco... n'est pas encore avocat". marianne.net. 25 February 2020..
51. Ross, Aaron (May 31, 2018). "U.N. fires Central Africa legal adviser who accused peacekeepers of massacre". Reuters.
52. Kouassi, Carole (31 May 2018). "Centrafrique: la Minusca expulse un expert français qui l'accuse de crimes". fr.africanews.com (in French).
53. ""J'avais peur qu'il devienne violent" : le récit glaçant de la jeune femme qui accuse Juan Branco de viol". ladepeche.fr. 2 May 2021.
54. "L'avocat Juan Branco visé par une enquête pour viol". Le Monde.fr. 30 April 2021. Retrieved 1 June 2021.
55. Décugis, Jean-Michel (June 2021). "Visé par une enquête pour viol, l'avocat Juan Branco placé en garde à vue". Le Parisien. Retrieved 1 June 2021.
56. "Juan Branco mis en examen pour viol". lepoint.fr. 24 November 2021.
57. "Sur Wikipédia, les vies rêvées de Juan Branco". 21 February 2020.
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59. Library of the Congress
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62. "Editorial description". 2020-02-25.

• Living people
• French people of Spanish descent
• 21st-century French lawyers
• 1989 births
• École Normale Supérieure alumni