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Benalla has since said in many interviews that his actions on May 1 were strong but not violent. He was just trying to help the police.
The new photo was released Monday by the French investigative website Mediapart, showing Benalla posing with a gun for a selfie at a restaurant in Poitiers in April 2017 during the election campaign.
The picture shows him holding a rifle with two men by his side and a waitress. The waitress, who later identified herself in a video posted on Mediapart as Laura and in the Archives restaurant, told the website that Macron, then a presidential candidate, was present at the event. of the picture.
"After taking the selfie with Alexandre Benalla, Emmanuel Macron was about five meters away from me, and I also asked him if I could take a selfie with him and he agreed," said the waitress at Mediapart.
The Elysee Palace, the official office of the president, declined a request from CNN to comment.
Mairé said the Poitiers prosecutor's investigation will seek to determine if Benalla was allowed to carry a weapon in the city at that time.
Paris police chief Michel Delpuech told reporters that during the presidential campaign, a firearms license had been sent to the security guards to protect the headquarters of the Macron festival in Paris.
Benalla told the French newspaper Le Monde in July that he had never left the party headquarters with his gun. "We are not crazy, there is a risk to the reputation of the candidate," he said.
Last week, Benalla told the Senate investigative committee that he was responsible for security logistics during the election campaign, but had never been Macron's bodyguard. "I regret to tell you that during the presidential campaign, I was not the bodyguard of Emmanuel Macron."
On Wednesday, lawyer Laurent-Franck Liénard announced on his Facebook page that he was resigning from Benalla's defense and wished him "courage in the future".
He did not say why he was leaving.
Lawyers Jacqueline Laffont and Pierre Haik confirmed Thursday to CNN that they now represented Benalla but had no comments regarding the selfie of firearms.
