Catherine Griset, Marine Le Pen's assistant, at a Paris appeals court, on Tuesday, January 27, 2026. SERGIO AQUINDO FOR LE MONDE
Catherine Griset and Marine Le Pen have been friends for decades. "I was 20, she was 25, she was a young lawyer, and I became her legal assistant," Griset said with a smile on Tuesday, January 27, at the ninth day of the appeal trial for embezzlement over suspected fake jobs at the European Parliament. Since then, they have been mostly inseparable. Griset became Le Pen's personal assistant within the party, then her European parliamentary assistant in Strasbourg, and finally, on paper at least, her accredited parliamentary assistant in Brussels, where she was supposed to appear every day, even though she lived in the western Paris suburb of Garches, together with her daughter.
For her phantom presence at the European Parliament from December 2, 2010, to February 14, 2016, Griset was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison sentence and a two-year ban on holding elected office, with immediate effect, on March 31, 2025. During the investigation, she had claimed to live in Brussels full-time. "Maybe I was a bit stressed," she said, with some difficulty. For her, being in one place or another did not seem to make much difference, even when Le Pen became the far-right party's president in 2011.
