Donald Trump says France’s Marine Le Pen’s guilty verdict ‘big deal’, similar to his cases

Donald Trump has offered support for far-right leader Marine Le Pen, once seen as France’s next President, after she was handed down a four-year jail sentence and banned from public office until 2027.

US President Donald Trump has compared French far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s conviction for fraud and the ban on her running for office to his own legal battles.

Le Pen slammed the “political decision” and insisted she had not abandoned hope of standing in presidential elections in 2027 after a court handed her a five-year ban on running for office.

The judge also gave her a four-year prison term, which is to be served with an electronic tag, drawing immediate criticism from her party and other far-right leaders.

“She was banned from running for five years and she was the leading candidate. That sounds like this country, that sounds very much like this country,” Trump said, describing the court ruling as “a very big deal.”

Le Pen, 56, along with nine figures from her National Rally (RN) party were convicted over a scheme where they took advantage of European Parliament expenses to employ assistants who were actually working for the party.

Twelve assistants were also convicted of concealing a crime, with the court estimating the scheme was worth 2.9 million euros ($A5m).

Le Pen said she would appeal the “political decision”, and vowed that in “no way” would she retire from political life, in a combative interview with the commercial French television network TF1.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been banned from politics for five years. Picture: AP

“I’m not going to let myself be eliminated like this. I’m going to pursue whatever legal avenues I can. There is a small path. It’s certainly narrow, but it exists,” she said.

She said that the appeal would be lodged “as quickly as possible” and said that the judiciary should “get a move on” so it is heard in time.

Describing herself as the “favourite” to win the 2027 presidential elections, Le Pen characterised the judge who delivered the verdict as saying: “’I do not want Marine Le Pen elected’” and lashed out at “’practices we thought were for authoritarian regimes”.

“I am going to appeal because I am innocent,” Le Pen said, while acknowledging that as things stood now “I am eliminated” from the presidential race.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Picture: AP Photo

All the RN officials including Le Pen were banned from running for office, with the judge specifying that the sanction should come into force with immediate effect even if an appeal is lodged.

“The court took into consideration, in addition to the risk of reoffending, the major disturbance of public order if a person already convicted … was a candidate in the presidential election,” said presiding judge Benedicte de Perthuis.

She left the courtroom after her conviction and this sanction were announced, but before the judge announced rulings on a potential prison sentence and fine, an AFP correspondent said.

Earlier, Le Pen said in a piece for the La Tribune Dimanche that the verdict gives the “judges the right of life or death over our movement”.

French far-right National Rally (RN) party leader Marine Le Pen was a three-time French presidential candidate. She was found guilty of embezzling EU funds. Picture: AP

Three-time presidential candidate Le Pen faced her best-ever chance of winning the French presidency, and has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

With her RN emerging as the single largest party in parliament after the 2024 legislative elections, Le Pen believed she had the momentum to finally take the Elysee in 2027 on the back of public concern over immigration and the cost of living.

Polls currently predict that she would easily top the first round of voting and make the second round two-candidate run-off.

WORLD LEADERS REACT

The reaction from Moscow to the verdict was swift. “More and more European capitals are going down the path of violating democratic norms,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“Je suis Marine!” (“I am Marine”), wrote Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of her main allies in the EU, on X in support.

Given her current popularity, even some opponents have expressed discomfort over the prospect of Le Pen not making it to the starting line of an election.

“There are a very significant number of our fellow French citizens who identify with Marine Le Pen’s words and her struggle, and personally I would be very upset, to put it mildly, if she were unable to run to represent them,” France’s former EU commissioner Thierry Breton told French television at the weekend.

Marine Le Pen (L) and French far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally) RN party's President and lead Jordan Bardella. Picture: AFP)

FUTURE OF THE PARTY

Waiting in the wings is her protege and RN party leader Jordan Bardella, just 29, who is not under investigation in the case.

Bardella, reacting to the verdict, said French democracy was “executed” with the “unjust” verdict.

In a documentary broadcast by BFMTV late on Sunday, Le Pen for the first time explicitly gave her blessing to Bardella becoming president. “Of course he has the capacity to become president of the republic,” she said.

But there are doubts even within the party over the so-called “Plan B” and whether he has the experience for a presidential campaign.

Le Pen took over as head of the then-National Front (FN) in 2011 but rapidly took steps towards making the party an electoral force and shaking off the controversial legacy of its co-founder and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died earlier this year and who was often accused of making racist and anti-Semitic comments.

She renamed it the National Rally and embarked on a policy known as “dediabolisation” (de-demonisation) with the stated aim of making it acceptable to a wider range of voters.

Prosecutors accused the party of easing pressure on its own finances by using all of the 21,000-euro monthly allowance to which MEPs were entitled to pay “fictitious” parliamentary assistants, who actually worked for the party in France.

And prosecutors argue that its “organised” nature was “strengthened” when Marine Le Pen took over as party leader in 2011.

Originally published as Donald Trump says France’s Marine Le Pen’s guilty verdict ‘big deal’, similar to his cases