Marine Le Pen will not be allowed to stand in France’s next Presidential election after being banned from politics for five years following conviction on embezzlement charges in a ruling condemned by Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister as a “declaration of war by Brussels”. The Telegraph has more.
The National Rally (RN) chief was also handed a four-year prison sentence, of which two years are suspended, and a €100,000 fine.
The judge said Le Pen was “at the heart” of a scheme to embezzle EU funds to pay party staff.
She was found guilty alongside dozens of other party associates earlier this morning but stormed out of the court before she could hear the judge’s verdict.
The ruling all but ends her bid to replace Emmanuel Macron as France’s president at the 2027 election.
Le Pen could fight the immediate ban, but it would only be lifted if any appeal is upheld before the election. She will retain her seat in the National Assembly until her mandate ends, however. …
Le Pen is likely to appeal the sentence, meaning the jail term and fine will be put on hold, but the ban has been put into place immediately.
Matteo Salvini, Italy’s Deputy PM, has said the decision was a “declaration of war by Brussels”.
Matteo Salvini said “those who fear the judgement of the voters often find reassurance in the judgement of the courts”.
“In Paris they condemned Marine Le Pen and would like to exclude her from political life. A bad film that we are also seeing in other countries such as Romania.
“The one against @MLP_officiel is a declaration of war by Brussels, at a time when the warlike impulses of von der Leyen and Macron are frightening.
“We will not be intimidated, we will not stop: full speed ahead my friend!”
The Telegraph’s James Crisp argues “this is Marine Le Pen’s Donald Trump moment”.
Mr Trump convinced voters he was a victim of ‘lawfare’, a witch hunt waged by an elite determined to block him from power.
He won November’s US Presidential election, despite being convicted of 34 felonies and facing charges over allegations he tried to overturn the vote he lost to Joe Biden.
Ms Le Pen is now barred from running the next race for the Elysée, a defenestration at the top of France’s largest single party that will make the deeply polarised country even more impossible to govern.
This is a huge blow for the National Rally leader, who has gradually detoxified her party’s brand while edging closer to power over the past three French Presidential elections.
But it is a gift for Europe’s nationalist Right, which will waste no time in transforming her into a martyr.
They will paint Ms Le Pen as a Joan of Arc, sacrificed in a Brussels-backed globalist conspiracy to prevent a Eurosceptic reaching the pinnacle of French politics.
Even before the verdict was read out in full, Hungary’s Viktor Orban was declaring “Je suis Marine!” on social media.
Follow the Telegraph‘s coverage here.
Stop Press: Daily Sceptic regular Eugyppius has weighed in. He’s unimpressed, obviously.
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Invasion of the technocrats.
A macro version of cancelling local elections.
I suspect the French people won’t tolerate it.
‘Saving Democracy’. There might be a pattern here, but I am too stupid to see it.
Shows how much conviction they have in their arguments doesn’t it, that they feel the need to remove any opposition…
According to Mike Benz the “elites” have said we have to redefine democracy from being the will of the voters to being about the sanctity of “democratic institutions” – meaning US – the military, NATO, the IMF, the World Bank, the MSM, the NGOs….
His interview a year ago with Tucker Carlson is a revelation of how the current state of censorship evolved to what it has become today:
https://rumble.com/v4e8hof-tucker-carlson-on-x-episode-75-mike-benz-on-the-national-security-state.html
In order to save democracy, we have to burn democracy…Paraphrasing from ‘the village’.
I’ve no idea whether she is guilty of what she’s been convicted for and don’t much care. I think this is probably a good thing on the whole as it makes it more obvious to more people what’s going on.
Nice to see the Telegraph getting in a holier than thou dig at the apparently “toxic” brand of RN.
You could probably find embezzlement in every party at some point. Even on the BBC someone pointed out that it’s probably money for the party rather that for personal gain, like BLM.
SNP got away with it so why is RN considered so bad?
Just a cockup/coincidence
Through an unfortunate turn of events, I had to listen to the BBC’s brand of news this morning. They described RN as “Hard Right”. It made me think how, decades ago, parties would be described as “on the left” or “on the right”, leaving room for distinction between the mainstream parties and the extremists. Nowadays, the main broadcast media never talk about parties that are right of centre without feeling the need to add the adjectives “hard”, “far” or “extreme”. Even if they occupy the space left by the former Conservative party.
Something similar is true of many Wikipedia entries. TV stations, newspapers, journalists on the political left are never described as such – the distinction is only made for anyone on the “right”. The message is – there are reasonable people who can reasonably disagree within reason – and then there is the “right wing”.
And nobody defines Hard or Far or Extreme Right. These are epithets are used to imply Fascist or Nazi.
F A Hayek: Socialism, Fascism, National Socialism all share the same roots – elevation of the State over the individual; central economic planning and control.
That being so… hands up Starmer, Macron, whatever fool is now running Germany which of you is not Hard/Far/Extreme Right. And evidently Stalin and Mao were.
Based on previous prosecutions of French Presidents, corruption appears to be a requirement of the Office.
Romania, Germany, France – The Dark Hand of the Left descends across Europe.
Watch your back, Nigel.
As for Nigel, I think his attitude is, if you can’t beat them, join them. This is also similar to what happened to Imran Kahn, as soon as he had a meeting with Putin, he was removed.
Didn’t they try this on Farage already? I seem to remember an investigation or threatened investigation about misuse of EU funds.
This is the same EU which has never been able to get auditors to sign off on its accounts.
Still haven’t heard anymore of VDLs TXT messages to Albert Bourla. I remember that Romanian MEP holding blacked out documents, where is the justice!
If they don’t get them through the voters, they get them through the courts.
Shocking, not shocked.
Wow.
I’m stunned. I shouldn’t be. But I am.
I just thought that appearing to be too brazen would hold these people back.
Romania is one thing. But France? Really?
Clearly they no longer worry about appearances, so I’m not sure there is very much left to protect us from this horrid techno totalitarianism that reigns supreme in Europe now.
What might save us is exactly that brazenness. Overreach.
Maybe. Hopefully.
You’d think that tyranny eventually gets found out. And generally it does. But not always. The North Korea example freaks me out.
Well, North Korea has not been going that long, in relation to human history. The Soviet Union eventually collapsed. Communist China have cleverly allowed a mixed economy, to deliver the goods that keep people happy. But unpleasant if you have to live through it.
I don’t like those timescales. It’s hard for me to get enthusiastic about things that might happen after I’m long gone.
I don’t like them either, for the same reason. Meanwhile we keep buggering on as best we can.
Rona was about as brazen as it gets (utter lie, scamdemic, murder, destruction etc).
Micron et al will preach about their ‘thriving democracy’, where you put your enemies in jail or kill them.
They could declare a one party state and convince most of the sheeple that the dictatorship was a ‘thriving democracy’.
I wonder what they will do to Le Pen when she is in prison? Epsteined?
“Rona was about as brazen as it gets (utter lie, scamdemic, murder, destruction etc).”
I am still gobsmacked that they got away with it.
TCW — Germany’s mad rush to conscription’
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/germanys-mad-rush-to-conscription/
Obvious, I know. Still funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0dWo31hwpI
Thanks for posting that – yes still funny (and aren’t they skinny?)
Put a new RN candidate on the ballot (doesn’t matter who) and have Marine Le Pen stand behind them, silently, for every public appearance. And if the Powers That Be take further action against her then…
On GBN coverage of it all, the point was made that the appeal process is so sclerotic that she is, in effect, not capable of being a candidate at the next election, whatever the outcome of the appeal. So they will need another candidate – at least a physical one, if there is someone capable of taking over.
The process is the punishment
Fair point from Paul Weston, highlighting the corruption that is the EU and who the real crooks are. However, despite you guys no longer being part of the EU, we’ve seen what passes for ‘democracy’ these past years in the UK. This here makes me even less hopeful Reform will win the next election, in-fighting aside, because even if they are the front-runners leading up to the election, I don’t think they will be *allowed* to win. You just know some sort of shady shenanigans will go down nearer the time. I think polls can give a false perception and it’s rarely as black and white as whoever has the most votes wins.
”Barred from standing in the election. Fined, and jailed for two years (house arrest). Her crime? Threatening to win the French Election. This is Ursula von der Leyen’s dictatorship in action. And our Ursula is currently under investigation for real corruption, unlike the Lavrentiy Beria Lawfare waged against Le Pen. For those who don’t know, von der Leyen made an awful lot of money buying billions of euros worth of Covid-19 vaccines directly from Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla via SMS messages on her phone…. which she has now lost….”
https://x.com/PWestoff/status/1906692905177158074
When all else fails…
So now unaccountable Bureaucrats in the EU, using their provisional arm in the Judiciary, have decided that they have the authority to decide who may become a politician and be elected.
All those in UKIP pre 2016 who pointed out that there is nothing democratic about the EU are being completely vindicated.
I’ll be surprised if the French quietly put up with this despotism.
Governments and other powerful interests have been using a form of lawfare forever in the form of financial costs. Those with the deepest pockets get the best judicial outcomes. This is changing a bit where nefarious charges are brought against political opponents. The whole concept of a balanced and fair judiciary has always been questionable. It is just more overt now. This is openly revolutionary.
You have hit the nail squarely on the head! It is the Judiciary everywhere that is causing all the problems, either by giving a veneer of legitimacy to dictators trampling upon democracy, or by becoming dictatorial themselves, using “Judicial Overreach” and “Legislating from the Bench”, like that Communist Oaf de Moraes in Brazil.
All part of the Globalist dream of establishing a Global Kritocracy = Rule by Judges.
Le Pen should seek political asylum in the UK or USA and wage political war against Macron’s dictatorship.
I wish Navalny had done that, instead of walking straight into the jaws of the Lamprey Putin, now busy grinding up Slavs in the Meatgrinder War along with his secret friend the Lamprey Zelensky. Both of them happily massacring White Men in open genocide, trying to reduce the 7% down to 5% even faster.
Both Lampreys should be arrested and charged with Crimes Against Humanity.