A top Italian magistrate has faced criticism after sending an email where he described Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as “dangerous” due to her political beliefs.
According to many on the Right in Italy, that was further proof of what they claim is a left-wing bias of the judiciary and magistrates after a judge recently tried to prevent the transfer of migrants from Italy to Albania.
Marco Patarnello, deputy prosecutor of the Court of Cassation, attacked Meloni in an email among the National Association of Magistrates in what was supposed to be a private debate between magistrates but was shared by the daily Il Tempo.
Patarnello claimed the judiciary was under attack, in a situation that was “more dangerous and insidious” than ever.
He claimed that now the state of affairs had become particularly difficult “because Meloni has no judicial investigations against her and therefore does not move for personal interests but for political visions and this makes her much stronger and also more dangerous [compared to former PM Silvio Berlusconi].”
Patarnello continued: “The judiciary is much more divided and weaker” than in the past.
He added that the current government was united and strong and had the ability to changes laws and even the constitutional structure “by overturning cardinal principles that we considered intangible”.
Patarnello concluded by saying that the judiciary “must not engage in political opposition, but we must defend the jurisdiction and the right of citizens to an independent judge.”
“Without shyness.”
On the Right, the email has been widely seen as highly political, revealing bias and an intention to fight the conservative government based on ideology.
On X, Meloni shared the quote describing her as “dangerous”, adding: “A representative of Magistratura Democratica said.”
“Meloni non ha inchieste giudiziarie a suo carico e quindi non si muove per interessi personali ma per visioni politiche e questo la rende molto più forte, e anche molto più pericolosa la sua azione (…)”. Così un esponente di Magistratura democratica. pic.twitter.com/p2oeaXuvGF
— Giorgia Meloni (@GiorgiaMeloni) October 20, 2024
Senator Raffaele Speranzon, deputy vice-president of Meloni’s Brother’s of Italy Party (FdI), said the email “confirms the existence of a politicised judiciary, concerned with countering the action of Giorgia Meloni and her government”.
He said the fact that she did not have any legal issues or personal interests and acted on political connections that made here “more dangerous” in the eyes of Patarnello was shocking.
Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini of the League Party said: “There are more than 9,000 judges in Italy: the overwhelming majority do their work freely and effectively. However, if someone has mistaken the court for a social centre or a place for political revenge, then they have chosen the wrong profession.”
Salvini is on trial himself for refusing the pro-migrant NGO Open Arms charity from docking in Italy, bringing in illegal migrants from Africa.
COMMENT: Unappointed prosecutors and judges are taking it upon themselves to do all they can to blunt democracy’s effect. By attempting to throw Salvini in prison for over half a decade, they are trying to subvert democracy, writes @Jay_Conz. https://t.co/xKpzAad55P
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) September 17, 2024
The National Association of Magistrates released a statement decrying what it said was “recurring accusations of politicisation” and asserting that magistrates adhered “only to the law and, in some matters such as immigration, primarily to supranational and European law in particular”.
Ilaria Cucchi, senator of the Greens and Left Alliance, filed a complaint against Il Tempo, the newspaper that shared the explosive email.
She claimed she was concerned about the consequences of the publication of the email and called for an investigation to clarify how the news outlet came into possession of the correspondence.
Cucchi accused Tommaso Cerno, director of the newspaper, of having breached the confidentiality of private correspondence.
Senator Marco Lisei, group leader of Fratelli d’Italia in the Constitutional Affairs Committee, pointed out that in first two years of the Meloni government the Left had “constantly cried about the authoritarian drift and the danger to freedom of information” but added that “the opposite is true”.
“It is the Left who truly undermines public discourse through their demonisation of dissenting views and their frequent use of legal action to intimidate journalists they find inconvenient,” Lisei said.
The centre-right politician Antonio Tajani claimed there was a group within the judiciary that was “historically linked to the then Communist Party, which first attacked Berlusconi and now takes it out on Meloni”.
Maurizio Gasparri, leader of the centre-right Forza Italia group in the Senate, asked for an immediate inspection by the Ministry of Justice regarding the email.
Former progressive PM Matteo Renzi said in a reaction: “If you are the attorney general of the Supreme Court, instead of writing in a chat on Saturday afternoon, write a sentence.”
But Giuseppe Conte, of the 5 Star Movement, said the small quote from Meloni was selective and twisted the truth.
Elly Schlein, secretary of the left-wing Democratic Party, accused the government of going against the separation of powers with its criticism of what she called the progressive magistrates.
On October 21, Rete4, an Italian TV channel, showed posts on social media from another magistrate, Francesco Crisafulli, commenting on political issues with the Democratic Party, a leading Italian social-democrat party.
Crisafulli is also an immigration judge in the Court of Rome. He said he wanted an agreement between two politicians on the Left, stating that otherwise, it “would give victory to the ‘madmen’ of Meloni’s FdI”.
Prior to that, Crisafulli had refused to take down fake election posters of Meloni and her party as an election loomed. A progressive group had spread falsified images, targeting the PM and her party. Meloni sued, asking for the material to be removed for being misleading but Crisafulli sided with the defence.
He also ruled against a decree by then-interior minister Matteo Salvini on IDs for homosexual parents, requiring them to choose titles of “parent 1” or “parent 2” in their identity cards.
In 2019, another magistrate, Emilio Sirianni, told a left-wing mayor: “Don’t worry, we are not impartial judges, or rather we are not indifferent, we are biased.”
One year before that, Luca Palamara, then-head of the Union for the Constitution, a progressive judicial group, told a colleague who was worried about how judges tried to stifle Salvini from enacting border policies while he had the law on his side. “You’re not wrong, you’re right, but now we have to attack him,” Palamara said.
Another judge described Salvini as “a sh*t”.
Italians speak of the “toghe rosse“, or the “red togas”, to describe such left-wing judges.
Berlusconi also had frequent clashes with the magistrates, whom he always claimed were politically motivated.
Many of the high-profile cases against him failed, were dismissed or he was acquitted. Only a few led to final convictions, notably his 2013 tax-fraud conviction
Berlusconi often portrayed judges as part of an unelected elite, hostile to his pro-business, populist policies.
He famously said in 2003 that “70 per cent of judges are mentally disturbed”.
