Juan Branco

He gained notoriety in France in early 2020 for his involvement in the Griveaux affair.

In February 2020 it was reported that he was representing the Russian activist Petr Pavlensky both before and after the latter leaked sexually explicit videos depicting Benjamin Griveaux, then candidate in the mayoral elections for Paris. Multiple sources claim that Juan Branco was himself involved in the leak, a criminal offense under French law. This was denied by Branco.

Pavlensky was arrested on 14 February 2020 for stabbing two people during a New Year's Eve party organized by Branco and his girlfriend in a Paris flat owned by the latters' parents.

In 2019 he published the book "Crépuscule", a pamphlet in which he criticized the French president, which sold more than 130.000 copies.

In 2018 he outed the homosexuality of his former class-mate Gabriel Attal on Twitter.

He briefly worked as an independent expert for the United Nations in 2018, where he has tasked with developing a strategy for investigations conducted by the Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic. After he accused peacekeeping forces of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) of having been involved in a massacre in the city of Bangui - an accusation denied by MINUSCA - he was expelled from the country and fired by the UN less than a week after his mission started.

Branco went on to join the left-wing populist party La France Insoumise. He stood in the 2017 French legislative election for Seine-Saint-Denis's 12th constituency where he placed fourth. His former running-mate stated that Branco "wanted to win a parliamentary seat and abandoned the party after the loss". After he was refused a sufficiently high spot on the electoral list of La France Insoumise in the 2019 European Parliament election in France his support for the party ended and he called for an abstention in the election.

After his admission to the Bar of Paris, he represented Jean-Luc Mélenchon beginning in 2017. His work with Mélenchon ended in 2018 for unknown reasons. He has also represented his father Paulo Branco against Terry Gilliam in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote case.

He studied philosophy and law at the École normale supérieure. He became politically active as a student, when he protested French copyright law HADOPI. In 2016 he concluded his postgraduate studies, during which he focused on the Germain Katanga ICC's case, and was awarded a Doctor of Law. He continued his academic work as a visiting researcher at Yale Law School and Sapienza's University of Rome. He worked as a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for International Law from 2015 to 2016.

In 2016, before he was admitted to the bar and legally permitted to practice law, he solicited Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the group directly involved in the attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015 (in which 130 people were killed and 683 others were injured), proposing in a letter to help in his legal defense and claiming to be representing Julian Assange.. One of the French lawyers representing Abdeslam characterized Brancos actions as attempted fraud.

Branco was born in Estepona, near Malaga. He is the son of film producer Paulo Branco and became a French citizen in 2010.

Juan Branco (born 26 August 1989 in Spain) is a Spanish and French lawyer, writer and political activist.