Juan Branco

Branco was born in Estepona, near Málaga. He is the son of film producer Paulo Branco and became a French citizen in 2010.

He studied philosophy and law at the École normale supérieure. He became politically active as a student, when he protested French copyright law HADOPI.[1] In 2016, he concluded his postgraduate studies, during which he focused on the Germain Katanga ICC's case,[2] and was awarded a Doctor of Law. He continued his academic work as a visiting researcher at Yale Law School and Sapienza's University of Rome. He went on to work as a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law from 2015 to 2016.[3]

As a student, Branco actively supported centre-right former prime-minister Dominique de Villepin, a friend of his mother's.[4]

Afterwards he supported The Greens (France) and then went on to participate in the campaign of future President François Hollande. He worked several months for future French Minister of Culture and Communications Aurélie Filippetti. Filippetti 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 describes him as "dangerous, intelligent and skillful", as "megalomaniacal, a compulsive liar and very, very manipulative".[5]

Branco went on to join 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".[4] 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.[5][6]

He became a vocal supporter of the Yellow vests movement, some of whose members he also represented in court,[7] and a critic of President of France Emmanuel Macron thereafter.[8]

In 2018 he outed the homosexuality of his former class-mate Gabriel Attal on Twitter.[9]

He worked as a legal adviser to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, trying to help obtain asylum for Assange in France.[10][11]

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".[12]

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.[13][14] As he was not admitted to the bar and therefore nto legally permitted to practice law at the time, one of the French lawyers representing Abdeslam characterized Brancos actions as attempted fraud.[15]

After his admission to the Bar of Paris, he represented Jean-Luc Mélenchon beginning in 2017. His work with Mélenchon ended in 2018 for unknown reasons. He has also represented his father Paulo Branco against Terry Gilliam in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote case.[16]

He briefly worked as an independent expert for the United Nations in 2018, where he has tasked with developing a strategy for investigations conducted by the Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic.[17] After 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 and fired by the UN less than a week after his mission started.[18]

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 candidate in the mayoral elections for Paris. Multiple sources claim that Juan Branco was himself involved in the leak,[19] a criminal offense under French law.[20] 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.[21]

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".[22] Branco originally followed the advice but later reverted his decision and joined the defense of Pavlensky once more.[23] 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". [24]

In October 2020 it was reported that disciplinary proceedings are being pursued against Branco by the Paris Bar Association following his involvement in the affair.[25]

Juan Branco wrote multiple articles for Le Monde diplomatique and Les Inrockuptibles.[11]

Branco's book "Crépuscule", a pamphlet in which he criticized the French president, was published in 2019. It was commercially successful[26] but received mostly negative reviews in the French press.[27][28][29][30][31][32]

Juan Branco has been editing his own Wikipedia 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.[33]

He once wrote a threatening letter to the employer of another Wikipedia editor, pretending to be a "Wikipedia administrator" named "Addas Karadas" and threatening legal action.[34]

• Réponses à Hadopi (Paris, Capricci, 2011, ISBN 978-2918040255)[35]
• De l'affaire Katanga au contrat social global: Un regard sur la Cour pénale internationale (Paris, 2015, LGDJ-IUV, 2015, ISBN 978-2370320582)[36]
• L'ordre et le monde (Paris, Fayard, 2016, ISBN 978-2213680880), edited by Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin[37]
• D'après une image de Daesh (Paris, Lignes, 2017, ISBN 978-2-35526-164-0)[38]
• 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