| | | End of the Line for Marine Le Pen?
Posted on April 1, 2025 by Baron Bodissey
As I reported yesterday, Marine Le Pen was convicted and sentenced for “embezzlement” related to her use as an MEP of European Parliament funds. The significant part of the sentence was her exclusion from political office for five years, preventing her from running in the 2027 presidential election, which she otherwise stood a good chance of winning.
Absent some sort of higher judicial intervention, her political career has effectively been cut short. I consider a successful appeal of the sentence to be unlikely, and a pardon by President Macron — which has been floated by various writers — to be even more unlikely. But then, my understanding of the intricacies of French politics is minimal, so who knows?
At this point, the only way that Ms. Le Pen might regain her momentum would be if millions of her angry supporters took to the streets, erecting barricades and tossing rocks at police, but that seems the unlikeliest outcome of all.
Yesterday I happened to remark on Skype: “If French guys had any real nads, they’d take to the streets over this one.” This was Vlad’s response:
Here’s the counter-argument. The enemy pays attention to history and learns from it, which we do not. Typically it is the losers of the last conflict who learn, not the winners.
The cost-benefit of fighting back is not what it was even during the French Revolution. The costs are MUCH higher now, and the benefits are abstract to most people. Not that concrete yet.
This is true everywhere. So ONLY Americans took to the streets after an election was stolen in 2020, and they were severely punished for it. Severely.
The people we SEE on the streets are professional leftist agitators. Their cost-benefit is created by the COMINTERN, who literally PAY them to carry signs and chant, and they know they won’t be punished for what they do.
This is because the losers of previous conflicts from the Left, such as the Nazis and Communists, learned how to do it all right this time. I think they read Sun Tzu, actually.
However, we know that there are some things that the outraged citizens of France would take to the streets over. For example, a reduction in their pensions, or an increase in the retirement age. We know this, because they did exactly that a few years ago.
But I can’t see them doing the same for Marine Le Pen. I think she’s out of options.
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Concerning the “embezzlement” charge: what Marine Le Pen was convicted for was essentially diverting her stipend from the European Parliament to pay her Rassemblement National staff. In effect, she was using the money as a political slush fund, which is what everybody, and I mean everybody, does.
Twenty years ago, when I first started following the EU closely, I learned about what all the MEPs did with their lavish funding. It allowed them to live an extravagant lifestyle they could otherwise only dream of. Ms. Le Pen was less corrupt than most, in that she didn’t use the money to enrich herself, but only to pay her subordinates. Nevertheless, she has been targeted and brought down for it.
That’s how it works in a fully corrupt totalitarian system. When there are laws against so many common practices, and the legal system is completely corrupt, anyone can be prosecuted and convicted when political exigencies require it (see Three Felonies a Day). That’s what happened to Marine Le Pen — her popularity threatened the Powers That Be, so she needed to be stopped using means that came readily to hand.
The following video is a report on the sentencing of Marine Le Pen, and subsequent reactions to it. Many thanks to Gary Fouse for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
| 00:01 | | [unintelligible] | | 00:04 | | Marine Le Pen has been sentenced to five years of ineligibility and four years in prison, | | 00:09 | | two of which will be supervised in the form of an electronic bracelet. | | 00:12 | | A judgment that compromises her candidacy in the 2027 presidential election. | | 00:17 | | We are going to file an appeal, this is the first point. | | 00:21 | | The leader of Rassemblement National and eight Euro deputies | | 00:25 | | have been found guilty by the Paris court of misappropriation of public funds. | | 00:28 | | They are accused of having misappropriated funds of the European Parliament | | 00:31 | | to the profit of the extreme right party between 2004 and 2016. | | 00:36 | | Marine Le Pen left the hearing room in the morning without saying a word | | 00:39 | | before even the pronouncement of the sentence. | | 00:42 | | Ms. Le Pen, why didn’t you stay until… | | 00:45 | | Ms. Le Pen, a reaction! | | 00:48 | | During her trial, the leader of the extreme right brushed aside | | 00:51 | | all the accusations lodged against her party | | 00:54 | | of paying parliamentary assistants with European Parliament money, | | 00:58 | | who were actually working for the National Front. | | 01:01 | | It is something that during the three months of hearings that we have had that we revealed, | | 01:06 | | where there was a systematic denial of what had happened during those years. | | 01:10 | | and I have the impression that the court, I have the conviction, | | 01:13 | | that the court really took this situation into account, | | 01:17 | | this posture in all the cases of denial, in saying, “Since you are in total denial, | | 01:22 | | and I also feel that as the judicial court of Paris, there is a risk of repeat offense, | | 01:27 | | and thus I am applying provisional execution concerning the additional penalty of ineligibility”. | | 01:31 | | The court estimates that the harm rises to the level of 2.9 million euros | | 01:34 | | in funds misappropriated over more than eleven years. | | 01:39 | | The judgment prompted a quick reaction from the European extreme right and Russia. | | 01:43 | | Viktor Orbán, the nationalist prime minister of Hungary, for example, wrote on X: “I am Marine.” | | 01:49 | | The Kremlin, for its part, deplored a violation of democratic norms. | | 01:54 | | In France, the reactions within the camp of Marine Le Pen as with the other parties, | | 01:57 | | didn’t take any longer. —Today, it is not just Marine Le Pen who has been unjustly convicted, | | 02:02 | | it is the French democracy that is (condemned). | | 02:06 | | The election, it is one person, a coming together between a candidate and the people | | 02:10 | | and clearly, the judges wanted that it not be Marine Le Pen. | | 02:14 | | They wanted to deprive them of their natural candidate and, perhaps, a next presidential election. | | 02:19 | | This is very serious. —When we give lessons of setting an example to everybody, | | 02:23 | | we should start by applying them to ourselves. In the end, that is what guarantees integrity, | | 02:27 | | the normal functioning of public powers guaranteed by Article 5 of the Constitution. | | 02:31 | | So it is normal that a candidate for the presidency of the Republic | | 02:34 | | should respect these elementary principles of integrity. She did not respect them. | | 02:38 | | The decision to remove an elected official from office should be returned to the people. | | 02:41 | | This is what the recall referendum would be used for in a 6th Democratic Republic. | | 02:46 | | An opinion poll by IFOP for JDD [Journal de Dimanche], which appeared on Sunday, | | 02:49 | | gives Marine Le Pen between 34% and 37% of the intended vote | | 02:54 | | for the next presidential election, far ahead of her competitors. |
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