France: Benalla refuses to answer questions about passports, denies lying to senate

SOT, Alexandre Benalla, former Deputy Chief of Staff to the President (French): "For obvious confidentiality reasons, and because it does not concern your fact-finding mission, which has the power of a senate inquiry, I will not answer that question."
SOT, Philippe Bas, Senator, head of the judiciary committee (French): "Mr. Benalla, it is we who decide whether our own questions are within our mandate or not. That is not your role."
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SOT, Alexandre Benalla, former Deputy Chief of Staff to the President (French): "No, absolutely not. If there were questions that bothered me, I would have told you a long time ago and I wouldn't have answered in such a clear and long and specific way as I have since September 19. What I can tell you, if your question is about how the administration functions, is that those passports were given to me in a normal way."
In a senate hearing in Paris on Monday, former Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Alexandre Benalla, repeatedly refused to answer questions about his passports and about his professional activities since leaving the Presidential Palace. He also denied lying to the senate during his last appearance in September.
"I apologise, Senator," Benalla said repeatedly throughout the hearing, "but I will not be answering these questions."
He refused to answer, he said, on the basis of his being the subject of, and a witness in, a judicial inquiry and wished not to incriminate himself.
The former Deputy Chief of Staff also refused to answer questions about work he has done for private clients since leaving the palace, including during a trip to Chad in December 2018, during which he reportedly met with Chad's President Idriss Deby.
During a September 19 senate hearing, he was understood to have testified that his diplomatic passports had been taken back to the administration; however, he has since used one of these passports to travel, but he maintains that he did not lie during the September hearing.
"I said, 'I think,'" he explained, adding that "To think is not to affirm."
Alexandre Benalla came to prominence in July 2018, when a video surfaced of him wearing a police armband and assaulting protesters in a May 2018 demonstration. He was fired from the administration in August.