Ciro Grillo: "Good morning in the trial against me after the fall of the yellow-green government". Lega denies it

There is a political story that runs parallel to the judicial affair of Ciro Grillo, convicted at first instance to eight years for sexual violence, made up of suspicions, resentments and vendettas, real or presumed, which begins in the summer of 2019 and continues to this day. It was the son of the founder of the M5S himself who reopened it, accusing Giulia Bongiorno, a League senator and the complainant's lawyer, in the Telenord interview of having taken on her defense as a kind of political retaliation. His account contains a serious error: Ciro claims that the yellow-green government fell after the M5S vote to send Salvini to trial over the Open Arms case. That is not so, because the executive ended its run in August 2019 after the League leader's famous "Papeete," while that vote against the former ally came on July 30, 2020. Indeed, the League highlights the mistaken chronology with a note denouncing "the evident chronological error." Yet behind the mistaken account lies a more complex affair. "The son's judicial situation weighed heavily on 'Beppe' and consequently on us too," recounts an M5S veteran, in government in Conte I. Grillo still had a crucial and direct role in the Five Star Movement, and in that capacity he would have pushed for the agreement with the PD in 2019, also in the belief that a new majority with the Democrats could protect him on the justice front. A reading that the source extends to the subsequent season of the Draghi government. As for Bongiorno, the senator has always explained that she took on the defense in July 2020 at the request of the girl's family, rejecting any instrumentalization. As noted, it was precisely on the 30th of that month that the Senate authorized Salvini's trial. But the Five Star Movement's position was already known: on May 26, four of the five M5S senators had voted in committee to put the former ally on trial. And Bongiorno's choice was indeed interpreted within the Movement as a vendetta by the Carroccio. A suspicion, certainly not a proven circumstance. That those misgivings were circulating is documented by the chronicles of April 2021. Anna Macina, at the time M5S Undersecretary for Justice, defended Grillo after the video about his son and attacked Bongiorno, suggesting that information about the proceedings had reached Salvini. The senator denied everything and Minister Marta Cartabia summoned Macina, urging her to be prudent. In July 2021 another event occurred: the M5S was opposed to the Cartabia reform, but Prime Minister Mario Draghi telephoned Grillo, leading the then guarantor to persuade the Movement's ministers to give the green light to the measure. Why? Behind the scenes, the specter of conflict of interest began to be invoked, going so far as to compare Grillo to Silvio Berlusconi. There was no proof of advantages sought for his son, but the suspicion that the founder's private affairs were influencing political choices did become a matter of reflection within the party. And indeed that unspoken issue, never fully addressed, ended up damaging Grillo's relations with the Movement and with Giuseppe Conte as well. The latter today has no intention of intervening on the matter, now considered dead and buried on via Campo Marzio in Rome. Even if, like kryptonite, the affairs of the Grillo family still end up knocking on the M5S's door, at least on a symbolic level.