French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said she had full confidence in her top ally Jordan Bardella, accused by an investigative news website of making antisemitic comments in 2013, in a statement published Saturday.
"I have complete confidence in Jordan," Le Pen said in the brief statement published by La Tribune Dimanche newspaper. Bardella, tipped to be prime minister if Le Pen wins the presidency, has denied the allegations.
Le Pen had last week launched a vehement defence of Bardella and rejected the claims, after website Mediapart first published the allegations on Monday.
But this was her first comment on the controversy after, in a second report Thursday, Mediapart published screenshots of the messages Bardella is said to have sent to another person on Facebook's Messenger chat platform in 2013.
Bardella, 31, has said he would file a legal case against the Mediapart outlet for defamation, as well as "forgery and use of forgeries".
According to the report, Bardella wrote, among other comments, in a chat: "The Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so."
He was also alleged to have written "all the banks are owned by Jews".
Bardella has been a key player in Le Pen's project of "de-demonisation" to make the RN into an electable force and to expunge the legacy of her late father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded and led what was then the National Front (FN) and repeatedly made antisemitic remarks.
A poll published Monday suggested that Le Pen would easily lead the first round of voting in the elections next year, and would defeat any challenger in the second round run-off to win the Elysee.
She is planning to stand despite a conviction for a fake jobs scam in the European Parliament, a case Le Pen also says was falsified by opponents.
Bardella said Mediapart's report marked the start of a "total war" to derail Le Pen's campaign.
But Mediapart said it had authenticated the messages.
The outlet said biographical details revealed in the conversations prove that it was the real Bardella: a mother born in Italy, mention of an interview he gave to Le Parisien newspaper in 2013, and failing the entrance exam for the prestigious Sciences Po university.