After a scandal surrounding a leaked WhatsApp message from Nicolaus Fest, an AfD arbitration tribunal has now approved his expulsion. Fest wants to defend himself against it.
The Berlin AfD’s regional arbitration court has expelled European MP Nicolaus Fest from the party at the request of the federal party. This is reported by “Welt”, citing excerpts from a corresponding judgment. The reason for this is membership fees for his mandate in the European Parliament, which the party owes.
According to the party’s financial regulations, AfD MEPs must give eight percent of their monthly MP compensation to the party, which corresponds to 806 euros. According to “Welt”, Fest has not paid these since July 2022.
“Finally this dirty pig is gone”
In an email to the AfD federal office from January 2023, Fest justified this with a leaked message from an internal chat group of AfD members of the European Parliament. On the day of the death of the President of the European Parliament David Sassoli in January 2022, Fest wrote about him: “This dirty pig is finally gone.” The ARD capital studio reported on this at the time.
According to “Welt”, Fest also wrote in the email that the AfD’s top candidate for the European elections, Maximilian Krah, claimed to MPs from European partner parties at a dinner in July 2022 that AfD leader Alice Weidel had leaked the screenshot to ARD. He then told co-boss Tino Chrupalla that Krah was either slandering Weidel or he was right. A spokesman for Weidel denied this to “Welt” last year.
Firm: “Procedure should cover up intrigue against me”
The AfD regional arbitration court’s ruling is not final, writes Die Welt, because Fest will submit an application for review to the Federal Arbitration Court. The MEP told the newspaper: “The sole purpose of the procedure is to wipe out an intrigue directed against me by the two federal speakers and Mr. Krahs. However, the court formally focused essentially on the elected representatives’ fees and did not want to see the obvious abuse of the party exclusion process.”
Fest has been a member of the European Parliament since 2019. He led the AfD delegation there until February 2023. Between January 2020 and March 2021 he was chairman of the emergency board of the AfD Berlin. Until 2014, Fest worked as a journalist for “Bild am Sonntag”.
