Donald Trump has demanded France “free” Marine Le Pen and labelled her ban from running for office over a “bookkeeping error” a “witch hunt” just like he was subjected to. The Telegraph has more.
The hard-Right leader was found guilty of embezzling EU funds to pay party staff in a court ruling in Paris on Monday.
She was barred from politics from five years – preventing her from running in the next French Presidential election – and handed a four-year prison sentence, two of which will be served under house arrest and the other two will be suspended.
On Friday, the US President threw his support behind Le Pen and likened the affair to his own experience of being pursued and convicted.
“The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent, this time going so far as to put that Opponent in prison,” he wrote on his Truth Social account.
Continuing, he said he did not know Le Pen personally but that he appreciates “how hard she worked for so many years”.
“She suffered losses, but kept on going, and now, just before what would be a Big Victory, they get her on a minor charge that she probably knew nothing about – Sounds like a ‘bookkeeping’ error to me,” Mr Trump said.
“It is all so bad for France, and the Great French People, no matter what side they are on. FREE MARINE LE PEN!”
In the Spectator, James Tidmarsh explains the options open to Le Pen and the arguments she will make to try to overturn her conviction.
Le Pen is appealing the decision, which was handed down by the Paris criminal tribunal – the lowest tier of the French judiciary. The case now moves to the Court of Appeal, where her team will seek to overturn both the conviction itself and the penalty of ineligibility.
Le Pen will argue first that the misappropriation charge itself is questionable. Le Pen was convicted of using European Parliament funds to pay party staff – a practice widely acknowledged as common in Brussels. The court found no personal enrichment: the money went to party work. The defence contends that the line between parliamentary and political work is inherently blurry for any elected official – particularly in a body like the European Parliament, where national politics and European mandates are tightly interwoven. In short, her team says she is being punished for doing what everyone in Brussels has always done – and under a law that should never have been applied in the first place.
Second, Le Pen will argue that the law used to bar her from office – the loi Sapin II– should not apply retroactively. The misconduct for which she’s been convicted dates from 2004 to 2016. But the provision of the Sapin II Act that allows judges to impose immediate ineligibility for financial offences only came into force in 2017. Le Pen’s legal team will argue that applying it retroactively violates the principle that harsher penalties cannot be imposed for past conduct.
The Paris Court of Appeal has issued a statement saying it would examine the case “within a timeframe that should allow a decision by summer 2026”, which on the face of it allows enough time, should nothing go wrong.
Le Pen’s allies in Parliament are also looking at amending the law to distinguish between offences involving personal enrichment and those that do not and restoring the normal principle of delaying any punishment while appeals are ongoing. Though how changing the law now would help her after her convictions is unclear, unless it impacts on the appeal of course.
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