“FREE MARINE LE PEN!”
With this blunt call, a strange one in that the French far-right leader is walking the streets of Paris, President Trump has waded into the politics of an ally, condemning her conviction this week on embezzlement charges and her disqualification from running for public office.
The conviction was “another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. Elon Musk, his billionaire aide, drove home the point: “Free Le Pen!” Mr. Musk echoed on his social media platform X.
More than an extraordinary American intervention in French politics, the statements ignored the overwhelming evidence arrayed against Ms. Le Pen, who was convicted of helping orchestrate over many years a system to divert European taxpayers’ money illicitly to offset the acute financial difficulties of her National Rally party in France.
Instead, for the American president and his team, as well as an angry chorus of Le Pen supporters at home, her case has become part of a vigorous campaign to undermine the separation of powers and the rule of law, which have been portrayed by Vice President JD Vance as no more than a means to stifle the far right and to quash democracy in the name of saving it.
Ms. Le Pen will speak at a big National Rally demonstration Sunday in Paris under the banner “Let’s Save Democracy!” The National Rally was founded in 1972 as the National Front, an antisemitic party of fascist roots, by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. It was long seen as a direct threat to the democratic rule of the Fifth Republic, before Ms. Le Pen embarked on a makeover.
She is a front-runner in the 2027 French presidential election, but will not be able to run unless she secures a more lenient ruling on appeal. The Paris Court of Appeal, expediting the process, has said a decision is expected to be reached by summer 2026. It is far from clear, however, that this verdict would go her way.
The court sentenced Ms. Le Pen to four years in prison, with two of those suspended, and the other two to be served under a form of house arrest. Under this verdict, she would not be put behind bars. For now, Ms. Le Pen’s appeal puts her sentence on hold.
Mr. Trump, who said France had put Mr. Le Pen “in prison” and censored her, neither of which is true, compared her treatment to his own at the hands of a “group of Lunatics and Losers.” He faced indictments, convictions and criminal cases on his way to winning the presidency last year.
“They get her on a minor charge that she probably knew nothing about,” Mr. Trump said. “Sounds like a ‘bookkeeping error’ to me.”
In fact, the reams of evidence produced at trial and detailed in the more than 150-page verdict placed Ms. Le Pen at the heart of an elaborate system developed over three legislatures from 2004 to 2016 that used no-show “assistant” jobs at the European Parliament to finance her party. The people in these “jobs” worked for the party in roles like Ms. Le Pen’s security guard or personal assistant.
She has denied all charges, saying that the people involved were political aides, not European Parliament employees, even though they were paid with the assembly’s funds. Her sweeping dismissal of volumes of evidence was viewed as cavalier by the presiding judge, Bénédicte de Perthuis, one reason she considered her capable of similar acts if not barred from running for public office.
According to the court ruling, in June 22, 2014, Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, a former National Rally lawmaker at the European Parliament, wrote to Wallerand de Saint-Just, the party’s former treasurer. “What Marine is asking us to do is the equivalent of signing for fictitious jobs,” he said. “I understand Marine’s reasons, but we’re going to get burned because we’ll certainly be scrutinized as such a large group.”
That same month, Mr. Saint-Just wrote to Ms. Le Pen, portraying the party’s grave financial situation, the court said. “In 2013, monthly expenses were 100,000 euros more than expected,” as a result of missions, receptions, travel and conferences, he said. “We will only get by if we make significant savings thanks to the European Parliament.”
Those “savings” amounted to close to $4.8 million over the time the scheme ran its course. At the same time, in 2014, Ms. Le Pen, using her ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, had secured in extremis a loan from a Russian bank to bail out the party.
French courts, acting on laws passed and vigorously supported by Ms. Le Pen over the past 15 years in response to public outrage over political corruption, have hardened their positions on cases involving prominent politicians, including Nicolas Sarkozy, a former president.
The 2017 presidential bid of François Fillon, a former prime minister, was derailed by an investigation into no-show parliamentary jobs involving his wife and several children. He was convicted in 2020 but his case is still going through the appeals process.
While Ms. Le Pen’s conviction and disqualification conform with these developments, they are unique in barring a leading presidential candidate.
This has ignited political passions and led to an intense debate pitting “democracy” and the “people” against the law, even if a state stripped of the rule of law is almost certainly headed toward autocracy.
“The verdict is heavy, a severe decision given Ms. Le Pen’s long disqualification,” said Anne-Charlène Bezzina, a senior lecturer in public law at the University of Rouen. “There’s never been anything like it in the Fifth Republic. But is it anti-democratic? Evidently not. A functioning justice system independent of political power is the sign of a healthy democracy.”
An opinion poll by the Ouest-France newspaper and the Ifop polling institute this week found that 64 percent of French people supported a court’s ability to immediately bar convicted politicians from running for office. At the same time, a poll by Sud Radio and Ifop found that 49 percent of people believe Ms. Le Pen should be allowed to run for president.