Juan Branco

Juan Branco is a Franco-Spanish lawyer, essayist, and militant known for Crépuscule (2019), Yellow Vest activism, and years as a legal advisor to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Born in Estepona and raised in Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he studied at Sciences Po and earned a PhD in international law before the Paris bar. His career sits at the seam of street politics, courtroom theater, and digital exposure: Assange asylum efforts, ICC filings on Mediterranean migrant deaths, defense work around Ousmane Sonko in Senegal, and the Griveaux affair as counsel to artist Petr Pavlensky. Through Les Aurores he has pushed explosive investigations into private Israeli cyber-espionage firms (NSO’s Pegasus lineage and the outfit he calls BOLD), claiming demonstrations of spyware targeting figures around Emmanuel Macron and Gabriel Attal—claims that echo the broader Pegasus Project findings but remain contested and largely unverified by mainstream outlets. He has also said U.S. intelligence surveilled him during Assange embassy visits. A declared 2027 presidential hopeful, he remains polarizing: bestselling anti-oligarchy pamphleteer to supporters, serial provocateur to critics.

Son of Portuguese film producer Paulo Branco and Spanish psychoanalyst Dolores López; École alsacienne classmate of future PM Gabriel Attal; early HADOPI opponent and Hollande 2012 culture-campaign aide before falling out with Aurélie Filippetti.

• Legal advisor to WikiLeaks/Julian Assange (c. 2015–2019); filed complaints after Mediapart reporting that CIA contractors had surveilled Assange’s London embassy visitors, including him. • Crépuscule sold 150k+ copies in a year and was downloaded ~1M times online—framed Macron as an oligarchic construct around Xavier Niel and Bernard Arnault. • Via Les Aurores (Feb 2026, with Thomas Dietrich) alleged Israeli spyware vendor BOLD (said successor ecosystem to NSO Group / Pegasus, with Unit 8200 hiring pipelines) demoed tools ROBIN/TUCAN against Brigitte Macron and Gabriel Attal at ~€50k/target—framed as private-sector Israeli intel-adjacent hacking for hire; not independently confirmed as a Mossad operation. • Earlier Pegasus Project / Forbidden Stories work showed Macron and French ministers on target lists for Israeli-made NSO spyware (often attributed to Moroccan clients); Israeli defense/Mossad officials were part of Israel’s post-scandal NSO review. • Represented Petr Pavlensky in the Griveaux affair; investigating judges later said they believed he likely helped disseminate the videos but brought no charges. • Arrested in Senegal (Aug 2023) while defending Ousmane Sonko, jailed briefly, then deported. • Announced a 2027 French presidential run (Dec 2025).

One of four children of Paulo Branco (Portuguese film producer) and Dolores López (Spanish psychoanalyst). Naturalized French on 31 March 2010; holds dual Spanish-French nationality.