Thread by @Telegraph

She loved power; he loved young women.

When Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni married in 2008, after a two-month courtship, many were already starting to guess the likely divorce date.

The rise and fall of France’s golden couple
🧵👇
telegraph.co.uk/news/0/nicolas…

💕Thirteen years later Bruni and Sarkozy are still married, and by all accounts, closer than ever.

This is despite the pair facing the ultimate relationship test – multiple legal challenges, brought about, Sarkozy claims, by ‘activist judges’. He has strongly denied all claims

None of the investigations have ever come to anything – until the former president’s luck ran out.

➡️ In March of 2021 he was convicted of trying to bribe a judge in 2014.

News of the scandal dominated headlines in France and around the world, hitting Sarkozy hard

🧑‍⚖️In March, Sarkozy was sentenced to 3 years in prison, 2 of them suspended.

Following his conviction he told the nation he was appealing against this ‘miscarriage of justice’.

He couldn’t believe that months-long wiretaps, without a proper warrant, were admissible in law

👫Bruni has stood by her husband.

She took to Instagram following his conviction: ‘What senseless persecution my love @ nicolassarkozy… the fight continues, the truth will come out, #injustice’, she posted
telegraph.co.uk/news/0/nicolas…

Sarkozy remains free during the appeals process.

🇫🇷He and Bruni avoided lockdown in Paris, spending it with her mother and sister at Château Faraghi, her family’s 10-bedroom, 1930s villa at Cap Nègre on the Riviera

‘People thought my haste in getting married was inappropriate,’ said Sarkozy.

‘But it was the most dignified and simple way to avoid Carla being burdened with the insulting status, at least in my eyes, of “official mistress”

‘Yes, I did once say I found monogamy boring, but that was before I got married. I love my husband very much, you see,’ Bruni told French Elle
telegraph.co.uk/news/0/nicolas…

↔️‘I think each of them believes at heart the other is too good for them, really, and can’t quite believe their luck,’ says a former colleague of Sarkozy in the Gaullist Party

❌Sarkozy’s bribery conviction is without doubt the lowest point in the career of a politician who, more than any other, symbolises law and order.

But his detractors who think this career is over are way off the mark, writes @moutet

While he waits for his next day in court, all eyes are turning to his next move.

🗳️His situation means there’s almost no likelihood of him running for office for a third time next year. But as things stand he could support one of the conservative candidates, or even Macron

As a former lawyer, Sarkozy is keeping himself busy rejoining the Paris Bar, where he advises on international business deals.

‘I’d rather he went and made some money,’ Carla told a TV interviewer when asked about his future political ambitions

Bruni told Spanish Vanity Fair, half joking, that if Sarkozy were to run again, he’d better not flinch at divorce.

🚫‘Politics makes people quite strange... Media attention makes everything worse. Me, I like peace’ 

telegraph.co.uk/news/0/nicolas…