The French Senate returns Macron's senior lawyers to prosecutors as part of the Benalla investigation

The French Senate has referred three of the principal aides to President Emmanuel Macron to prosecutors for having withheld information from an investigation into former Macron's bodyguard, Alexander Benalla. The government said the Senate was overstepping its powers, calling it "a political coup".

The Opposition-controlled Senate has opened an investigation into Benalla, who was fired from Macron's security aide last year after a video of the May Day protest was shot at him. he was wearing demonstrators while wearing a helmet and civilian clothes.

Benalla was sacked only after the newspaper Le Monde published the article, pointing out that the president was protecting him.

Last month, a Senate inquiry commission said senior officials of the Elysee had concealed information from them during their six-month investigation and had recommended that the case be referred to the prosecutors. On Thursday, the Senate ruled that prosecutors should investigate Macron's presidential secretary and help Alexis Kohler; his chief of staff Patrick Strzoda; and Lionel Lavergne, chief of security.

Boosting the findings of his commission, the Senate executive said Strzoda was suspected of possible perjury, while Kohler and Lavergne were suspected of not revealing the whole truth about the case.

The commission said it found "serious flaws" in the handling of the case by the government, which affected both the president's security and "national interests".

A "political coup" according to the government

The presidency had rejected the conclusions of the Senate committee, considered "full of lies".

On Thursday, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe refused to attend a question and answer session before the Senate.

And the government spokesman, Benjamin Griveaux, said the Senate's decision to send the badistants to prosecutors was "neither reasonable nor measured, it was a political coup." "

Francois Patriat, who heads the Macron republic committee in the Senate, accused socialists and conservatives of coming together to "take their revenge on an electoral defeat that they have never accepted. ".