Have French Judges Crushed Marine Le Pen’s Political Career?

It’s not that simple.

This video is available on Rumble, BitChute, Odysee, Telegram, and X.

On March 31, the Paris Criminal Court banned Marine Le Pen from running in the 2027 election for President of France. Miss Le Pen is polling well ahead of any other potential candidate and leads the National Rally, the largest party in the French legislature.

To understand how much of a shock this is, imagine the reaction if the US Supreme Court on March 4 last year had not declared that Donald Trump could run for President, but instead disqualified him because of what opponents called the Jan 6 “insurrection.”

In France, the outcry has been deafening. Her party has denounced what it calls an “assault on democracy” and even her sworn enemy on the hard left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, told his three million followers, “The decision to remove an elected official belongs to the people.”

In Britain, Nigel Farage said Miss Le Pen had been “cancelled” on “a very trumped-up charge.”

Elon Musk reposted a message from Donald Trump, who slammed a “witch hunt” and ended with “Free Marine Le Pen.”

Most French lefties are pleased with the result.

This case is not simple. The party—and Miss Le Pen herself—made foolish choices, and on the evidence, she is guilty as charged. Furthermore, if she can’t run in 2027, her replacement would be Jordan Bardella, who some think might be a better candidate.

Miss Le Pen and the National Rally were accused of embezzling more than €4 million—about $4.5 million—from European Union taxpayers between 2004 and 2016. The European Parliament gives Euro-deputies generous allowances for staff and assistants, but they are all supposed to work only on EU business, not party business back home.

Over the course of a nine-week trial, the court heard plenty of damning evidence. One parliamentary “assistant” asked Miss Le Pen to introduce him to the deputy for which he was supposed to be working—months after his job had started. Another so-called assistant exchanged a single text message with his alleged Euro-deputy boss the whole time he was supposed to be working for him.

At trial, Miss Le Pen denied all charges. She claimed the prosecution was misinterpreting EU law and was seeking her “political death” in a “politicized” trial.

She irritated the three-judge panel with evasive answers and what may have appeared to them as selective memory.

Her final sentence was a €100,000 fine and four years in prison—two suspended and two under house arrest with electronic monitoring. Miss Le Pen immediately appealed, meaning that these punishments take effect only after she has exhausted all appeals. However, the five-year ban on running for office applies immediately, and this is what has caused the most outrage because it knocks her out of the next presidential election. Twenty-four other party members were also found guilty.

As in the United States, a defendant can acknowledge guilt and expect more lenient treatment, and most punishments in France are stayed during appeal. In Miss Le Pen’s case, the presiding judge had to meet two tests to justify an immediate ban on running for office.

First was the seriousness of the crime, and the court determined that Miss Le Pen was the ringleader of a €4 million fraud. Second—and this is crucial—the judges had to find a likelihood of recidivism, and this was probably Miss Le Pen’s undoing. Denying all guilt and showing no remorse suggested she might do it again.

If she had said the party misunderstood the rules back in 2016, and has now taken strict measures never to misuse EU funds again, her ban on running for office would probably have been suspended—rather than enforced—while she appealed.

Part of the problem is that the party has a hard time hiring lawyers. The best ones don’t want the taint of working for “the far right.” Miss Le Pen’s lawyer acknowledged that their strategy was “not crowned with success.”

That’s an understatement.

Not all is lost. Under pressure from politicians, we just got this: “Paris court expects to hear Le Pen appeal in time for 2027 presidential vote.”

Ordinarily, French appeals are very slow, and a ruling would not have come in time for the election. Miss Le Pen welcomed this accelerated process as “good news,” but there is no guarantee she’ll win on appeal.

In the meantime, all eyes are on her 29-year-old protégé, the current party president, Jordan Bardella.

He is smart, a good debater, a TikTok star, and charms the ladies. However, rural and blue-collar Rally supporters revere the slightly dowdy, cat-loving Marine Le Pen and are suspicious of slick Parisians, and Mr. Bardella is slick.

On the other hand, identitarians think Mr. Bardella may be more solid on race. Last January, a TV report claimed he was behind a “racist” Twitter account from 2015 to 2017. He was said to have posted this doctored image of Jean-Marie Le Pen in a boxing ring with a black boxer, along with the text: “You dare defy me? I’ll knock your pants off.”

He posted an image of two white men in a swimming pool surrounded by non-whites who are saying: “LMAO at the Créteil swimming pool. Those two are wondering ‘how did I end up here?’ ”

And the same image, with the caption “Black Sea.” He also referred to journalists as journalopes, which is a combination of journalist and salope, which means “bitch” or “slut.” Tame stuff, really.

Mr. Bardella has also never said kind things about Islam. Miss Le Pen has shocked hardliners several times, by saying Islam is compatible with France, so long as it is “secularized.” Nor would Mr. Bardella send Ramadan greetings to “our Muslim fellow citizens” as National Rally legislator Guillaume Bigot did this year.

Instead, if it was he behind the phantom twitter account, he mocked Valerie Pécresse—a conventional conservative on the right—by writing, “Valerie and her comrade, Barbah-A-Papah leading the way, defending secularization.”

The Islamic-sounding name is a pun on the French for cotton candy and mocks the beard. Mr. Bardella has always denied that the account was his, but many hope that it was.

Were Miss Le Pen and her party singled out for prosecution? Even the BBC concedes that “practically every French political party has resorted to similar underhand methods in the past”—and have been convicted.

Just last year, nine members of the Macron-aligned Democratic Movement got suspended sentences and fines of up to €50,000 for exactly the same crimes—though on a smaller scale—for which the National Rally was charged.

In 2020, center-right former prime minister Francois Fillon was fined €375,000 and banned from public office for 10 years because he paid his wife and children for phony parliament jobs.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy is constantly in court on corruption charges—here he is, flanked by lawyers—and is even now under house arrest with electronic monitoring.

The French are used to seeing bigwigs get caught with their hands in the till.

Indeed, according to polls, 65 percent of French are “not shocked” by the Le Pen verdict. Fifty-four percent say she was treated fairly, and that the verdict shows that French democracy works.

Sixty-one percent say the conviction won’t hurt the party because Mr. Bardella could be a good candidate. The popularity of the party appears unchanged.

As the 2027 election approaches, Mr. Bardella will no doubt be at Miss Le Pen’s side. If the appeals court knocks her out for good, he will be well prepared to take her place.

If there is a lesson here, it’s this. If anyone has ever called you a racist or a fascist, keep your hands clean. Even if everyone else is driving over the speed limit and you’re just keeping up, you’re probably the one who will be pulled over. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.