Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig (SPD) wants to feed the leaked AfD emails into the review of a possible party ban – provided they contain evidence that the party is hostile to the constitution. “The emails could probably also be drawn on if they provide evidence of the AfD’s unconstitutionality,” she told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. The government must “examine seriously and systematically” whether the conditions for ban proceedings are met. And: “If an application has concrete prospects of success, it must be filed.”
What is the material? Unknown persons say they have put about 421,000 AfD emails online. According to ZDF, the dataset includes more than 50,000 attachments and roughly 300 gigabytes – bank statements, donation records, meeting minutes – and affects mailboxes including those of Leif-Erik Holm and Alexander Gauland. The AfD confirms a hack of a hosting provider and has filed a criminal complaint, saying only a few mailboxes, mostly unused for years, were copied. The authenticity has not been independently confirmed; ZDF frontal is analysing the data with the OCCRP network. Much of what has surfaced so far was already public.
Can the state use stolen emails?
In principle yes, says constitutional law professor Markus Ogorek in an interview with beck-aktuell (30 October): if the state had no part in the unlawful acquisition, that alone does not bar its use. Each email has to be weighed individually, though – against telecommunications secrecy (Article 10 of the Basic Law) and party freedom (Article 21). One forged message does not make the whole dataset unusable, but Ogorek calls the risk to a case “major”. Age matters too: “Information has no expiry date”, yet an individual’s old opinion weighs less in a procedure aimed at present and future threats. If state involvement in the hack ever emerged, that would change things; there is no evidence so far, and Ogorek regards the AfD’s hint at it as a “smokescreen”.
Why emails alone will not carry a ban
In 2017 the Federal Constitutional Court unanimously rejected banning the NPD: its aims were unconstitutional, but there were “(currently) no concrete, weighty indications” that it could achieve them. For a party the size of the AfD, Ogorek says, that hurdle matters little. Attribution is harder: statements by individual members are not enough; the party as a whole must be shaped by anti-constitutional goals. That is where the domestic intelligence agency (BfV) stumbled too. On 26 February 2026 the Cologne Administrative Court ruled in summary proceedings that the BfV may, for now, not classify the AfD as “confirmed right-wing extremist”. It saw a “strong suspicion” but could not establish that this defines the party overall – and relied only on public sources. The main case is open; nationwide the AfD remains a suspected case.
The emails could close that gap – or widen it. If they show the leadership shielding radical positions, an application is stronger. If they show it acting against extremists, they help the party.
Who decides – and by when?
Only the Bundestag, the Bundesrat or the federal government can file an application (Article 21 of the Basic Law, section 43 of the Federal Constitutional Court Act). North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister-President Hendrik Wüst (CDU) proposed a federal–state working group on 8 September: “Banning a political party can only be the last resort.” Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Manuela Schwesig (SPD) wants one too, and Hubig backs the idea. AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla read the Cologne ruling as proof that “an opposition cannot be eliminated this way”; the SPD and Die Linke want to keep pursuing a ban.
Our assessment, with moderate confidence: the working group, authentication of the data and its analysis will take months. An application within weeks is unlikely; the emails are one building block, not a shortcut. As of 7 November 2026.
Sources: Tagesspiegel/dpa, ZDFheute, beck-aktuell, Federal Constitutional Court, ZDFheute (Cologne ruling)
