“Pseudo-evidence”: the revelations of the online media Mediapart on Monday on the anti-Semitic writings of Jordan Bardella in 2013 have since been roundly denounced by the National Rally. Their argument ignores the technical and biographical elements provided by Mediapart three days after their first revelations.

Published on: 02/10/2026 - 18:08

The National Rally is increasing its counter-fires in the face of Mediapart's revelations. “The so-called 'investigation' is already collapsing,” argued the president of the National Rally Jordan Bardella on X on October 1.

These attacks aim to sow doubt about the reliability of information from the investigative media. Mediapart revealed, Monday September 28, that it had found numerous anti-Semitic messages written by Jordan Bardella between 2013 and 2014. Among other problematic writings, the MEP allegedly stated that the "banks are all owned by Jews".

To support its accusations, Mediapart also published a second article and a video on October 1, which detail the origin of these messages written in private conversations on Facebook and specify that they were authenticated by a bailiff, a profession responsible for establishing official findings.

So many elements which are nevertheless described by the National Rally, led by Jordan Bardella, as “pseudo-proof”. The president of the RN, who maintains that he never made these anti-Semitic remarks, also declared that “Mediapart has put forward absolutely no argument”.

This defense, however, comes up against the elements actually put forward by Mediapart to date. The France 24 Observers editorial team examined three of the RN's main arguments, both on the authenticity of the messages and on its transmitter:

“Obscure screenshots that can be manipulated” according to Jordan Bardella? Conversations authenticated by a bailiff

On X, Jordan Bardella denounced on October 1 “obscure screenshots that can be manipulated”. The screenshots to which Jordan Bardella refers are those of messages published in a montage by Mediapart, which highlights some of the anti-Semitic remarks made by a Facebook account named Jordan Bardella between 2013 and 2014 (below).

But these messages are not screenshots which could have been manipulated: first of all because Mediapart was able to directly consult the messaging system in which these messages were exchanged, as shown in its explanatory video broadcast on October 1.

The investigative media shares a filmed sequence of the Messenger messaging interface of the social network Facebook - partially pixelated to protect its sources, but in which we can read part of these exchanges. According to Mediapart, the anti-Semitic comments were made by an account in the name of Jordan Bardella to a person in the politician's entourage at the time.

Another argument which invalidates Bardella's remarks: Mediapart was also able to confirm the authenticity of such conversations with the company Meta, the parent company which owns Facebook. According to Mediapart, the source who received the anti-Semitic messages contacted Meta "at the request of Mediapart" in mid-August, in order to obtain a download of his conversations for the year 2013.

How is this possible? Since the implementation of the European regulation on personal data, the GDPR, in 2016, each user of Messenger messaging can in fact ask the social network to retrieve a copy of their data.

In these files consulted by Mediapart, the sources recovered all of his conversations, including with accounts which have since been deleted, as was the case with the account in the name of "Jordan Bardella" who made these comments.

And each time, all the messages visible on the messaging system match the elements sent by Meta, some of which were highlighted in the Mediapart video. These Meta documents also confirm that the name of the account sending these messages is indeed Jordan Bardella.

So that "there is no doubt", the investigative media even had a bailiff authenticate on September 29 that the anti-Semitic messages in the files sent by Meta to this source, in which all the anti-Semitic writings were located, were both very authentic, had not been modified since 2013 and were indeed kept over the period by an account in the name of "Jordan Bardella".

Could the text of the file sent by Meta, however, have been modified by the source once obtained, as affirmed by Virginie Joron, European deputy of the RN? “The idea that between the export of messages by Meta on August 16 and today, the source could have modified this export does not hold,” describes Alexandre Berteau, one of the co-authors of the investigation, to the editorial staff of France 24 Observers. “Simply because we did the export with this source, at our request and in his presence.”

The extraction of Facebook messages carried out the day after the first Mediapart article?

On the evening of the new revelations from Mediapart on October 1, Jordan Bardella also wanted to "draw attention to the fact that the extraction [of the messages by Meta] was made after the publication on Monday [September 28]", at the microphone of LCI.

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Except that Jordan Bardella confuses two elements here: the extraction of Messenger messages via Mediapart sources was carried out on August 16, according to the online media article and one of the authors of the investigation, Antton Rouget. Mediapart therefore already had these elements when the first article was published.

It is the confirmation by the bailiff that these documents are authentic which was carried out by Mediapart on September 29, one day after the publication of their investigation. “We issued this bailiff’s report because we were accused of being forgers,” explains Alexandre Berteau. “But we don’t do it in every investigation.”

An account in the name of Bardella who is not the head of the RN? Many messages about the private life of Jordan Bardella

Other criticisms, which may seem more legitimate at first glance, are made by the executives of the National Rally on this famous Facebook account sending these anti-Semitic messages in the name of "Jordan Bardella". Because according to them, these messages could have been sent by a homonym of Jordan Bardella. RN MP Kévin Pfeffer even published screenshots of Facebook searches for numerous accounts also called "Jordan Bardella", to demonstrate an alleged identification error.

Mediapart certainly does not have technical elements to prove 100% that this account was indeed kept by Jordan Bardella between 2013 and 2014. However, we find in these messages numerous biographical elements and anecdotes about the now president of the National Rally, which were then unknown to the general public in 2013.

Mediapart reports, for example, that a message mentions the origin of his mother, "born in Italy", and of his father "in France". Others evoke "pell-mell, among many other elements, his commitment 'at Marine Le Pen', his birthday, his studies", relates the online media.

Specific passages from the life of Jordan Bardella, described in particular in the biography of the president of the National Rally entitled “What I am looking for” (Fayard) and published in 2024, are also recounted by this Facebook account from 2013. Such as the fact that Jordan Bardella helped migrants to learn French, or that he failed the Sciences Po competition in 2013. Mediapart specifies:

"On this subject, he then rants against these 'private preps' that are too expensive in his eyes, their tuition fees, he writes, never falling 'below €1,000'. Jordan Bardella kept this resentment intact in his 2024 autobiography: 'The good student that I was nevertheless miserably failed the entrance exam to Sciences Po. I had skipped the famous preps, too much dear.'"

A complaint from Jordan Bardella for “forgery and use of forgery”

Future answers to shed light on this last gray area - however illuminated by numerous biographical elements - could come from justice. The president of the National Rally announced that he had filed a complaint against Mediapart both for “forgery and use of forgery” and for defamation.

In this legal framework, technical elements on the origin of this Facebook account, such as the IP address or the geolocation data of the account, could perhaps be requested from Meta (the parent company which controls Facebook) by the courts.

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