The summons of Miguel Ángel Rodríguez gives breath to the Government, which aspires to focus on the leak of the hoax | Spain

The Government believes that the summons of Miguel Ángel Rodríguez in the case brought against the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, gives it fresh air after several difficult days following the resignation of the leader of the PSOE in Madrid, Juan Lobato, over this case. The Executive considers that the judicial call to Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s chief of staff, who will have to testify as a witness and, therefore, is obliged to tell the truth before the judge, will allow him to put the focus back on the hoax that the squire of the Madrid president launched to defend Ayuso’s boyfriend in the case of his tax fraud. The national leadership of the PP understands, on the other hand, that the Madrid leader is winning the political game against La Moncloa, which has “made mistakes because it unsettles them,” maintain sources from the popular leadership. The case motivated this Tuesday a high-voltage clash in the Senate between Ayuso’s future rival at the polls, the Minister for Digital Transformation and the Public Service, Óscar López (who will confirm this Thursday his candidacy to lead the PSOE of Madrid ), and the general secretary of the PP of Madrid, Alfonso Serrano, who accused López of having sent the document whose leak the justice system is investigating without evidence. “You are trying to hide all the shenanigans of Ayuso’s father, brother and boyfriend,” the minister replied.

In the Government and in the PP there are doubts about how the Supreme Court’s investigation of the tangled procedure that has ended with the indictment of a State Attorney General for the first time in democracy will end judicially, when investigating the leak of an email that the lawyer of the Ayuso’s boyfriend exchanged ideas with the Prosecutor’s Office to negotiate an agreement that would free him from the conviction for a tax crime. It all begins when it is revealed that the partner of the president of Madrid defrauded the Treasury of 350,000 euros, but the attorney general and the provincial prosecutor of Madrid are accused of revealing secrets. “Criminal processes are very complicated. You come in with a lot of expectations and then they are often frustrating,” warns a PP leader, who has doubts that the attorney general will be convicted. The same in the Executive, where some sources indicate that it is most likely that the case will come to nothing for all those involved.

But another thing is the political derivative, which has become a fierce battle between Puerta del Sol and La Moncloa. Even more so since one of the heavyweights in Pedro Sánchez’s environment, the minister and former chief of staff of the president, Óscar López, has decided to take a step forward and try to challenge Ayuso for the Government of Madrid in the next regional elections. Ayuso’s team is trying to implicate the minister in the alleged leak that the Supreme Court is investigating. In this context, the summons to Rodríguez has given oxygen to La Moncloa, which puts the focus once again on Rodríguez’s hoax, as López did in his parliamentary clash in the Senate with the number two of Ayuso in the PP of Madrid, Alfonso Serrano. “There is a very clear sequence here. In the month of March we discovered that Ayuso’s boyfriend had allegedly defrauded the Treasury of 350,000 euros. On March 12, Mr. Rodríguez threatens a journalist, telling her we are going to crush you. On March 13, he leaked a hoax to a media outlet. And several media outlets echo the opposite, the truth,” López said in the Senate. “All this has a reason: you are trying to hide all the shenanigans of the father, of Ayuso’s boyfriend’s brother,” he said to Serrano.

The clash between the two in the Government control session in the Senate was very harsh, and Serrano accused López of being behind the email leak without evidence. “You shared it. The use of the State apparatus is something so serious that to save yourself you are capable of letting a woman below you take the piss, that is cowardly,” the PP leader shot at the minister in reference to the advisor of La Moncloa Pilar Sánchez Acera, named in the case for her exchange of messages with the former leader of the PSOE in Madrid Juan Lobato. López responded bluntly that he was attributing a false accusation to him and urged the PP leader to “apologize when it is proven false.” “You are going to drink Coca-Cola with Ayuso’s boyfriend and I suppose that with the chief of staff it will be whiskeys”, he counterattacked. “In what capacity were you there with an alleged criminal?”

Rodríguez, after learning of his judicial summons, reacted by leaving open what he will declare: “I will see what they ask me and I will see what I answer,” he told journalists. The Government later reminded him that, as a witness, he is obliged to tell the truth before the judge or he could incur a crime of perjury. “We hope that he will testify and that above all he will collaborate with justice and tell the truth, which is what I believe is the responsibility of any person who has to testify,” stressed the minister spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, at the conference. press after the Council of Ministers. Ayuso’s chief of staff will give a statement on January 8, and until then the political battle will continue.