By Michel Rose
PARIS, Sept 28 (Reuters) - French far-right leader Jordan Bardella said on Monday he had filed a defamation lawsuit against investigative website Mediapart over a report alleging he made antisemitic remarks in private messages over a decade ago, saying the story was an effort to "destabilise" campaigning ahead of next year's election.
The 31-year-old leads the far-right National Rally (RN) party which is seeking to clear its racist image and build close ties with Israel. The party's candidate, Marine Le Pen, is leading polls for the April presidential election.
Mediapart, in a report published on Monday, said it had reviewed dozens of private messages from 2013 to 2015 — the early years of Bardella's career in the National Front, the forerunner of the RN — that it said showed a pattern of antisemitic and conspiratorial rhetoric.
Mediapart cited one message in which it said Bardella claimed "all the banks are owned by Jews".
The left-leaning outlet, which has a long history of unearthing political scandals in France, said it had independently authenticated the private messages. Reuters did not independently authenticate them.
Mediapart said it also drew on first-hand accounts of former party colleagues, whom it identified by first name and last initial.
Speaking on broadcaster CNews, Bardella said: "These statements are completely delusional. They are not mine."
He added, "There is clearly an attempt to destabilise the campaign, coincidentally, just months before an election where we are leading in the polls. Again, I believe the French people are not fooled. They see that everything is being done to undermine us."
Bardella has become the face of the RN's decade-long effort to "de-demonise", or normalise, its image. He was the party's de facto presidential candidate until July, when an appeals court cleared Le Pen to hold elected office after a conviction over misuse of funds. Bardella will be France's prime minister if she wins next year's vote.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot wrote in a post on social media platform X: "To all those with short memories: antisemitism is not a mere blip for the RN; it is the very history of this party. This is the true face of the far right."
Le Pen, speaking with reporters on Monday, said she believed the report could "only be a fake, a manipulation, a dirty trick".
A Monday poll showed her coming first in next April's first-round vote and beating both leftist and centrist candidates in a May runoff.
A slew of antisemitic, Islamophobic and racist comments by some RN candidates derailed the party's hopes of winning a parliamentary majority in France's legislative vote in 2024. Bardella at the time pledged to avoid such "casting errors" in the future by systematically kicking out any candidates with a history of toxic statements.
(Reporting by Michel Rose and Juliette Jabkhiro; additional reporting by Makini Brice; editing by Gabriel Stargardter, Alexandra Hudson and Cynthia Osterman)
