Le Pen is Mightier Than the Sword: Fighting Talk from the French Far-Right

On 31 March 2025, the verdict finally landed. After an investigation lasting 9 years, Marine Le Pen (along with 22 other people) was convicted on charges of embezzling public funds. She was sentenced to a four-year suspended sentence coupled with an ineligibility to run for public office for five years.

The ruling has unsurprisingly provoked the indignation of the far right in France (and the rest of the world); however, very few people outside of Le Pen’s party, the Rassemblement National (RN), seem to be challenging the case on its merits (which in fairness would be difficult given that the ruling runs to 152 pages). Instead, the argument is that barring her from public office is a “political decision” and a “denial of democracy.” In a scathing attack on the courts on the evening of the decision, she claimed that “rule of law has been totally violated.”

I’m not sure whether one can objectively say that the punishment fits the crime, but the fact is that the law explicitly states that ineligibility should be systematically upheld for the embezzlement of public funds, so she can hardly claim to have been targeted for harsh treatment. Irony of ironies, this so-called Sapin II law (promulgated in 2016) was passed thanks in part to Le Pen herself, who called for lifetime bans for politicians found guilty of the misappropriation of public funds after former Socialist minister Jérôme Cahuzac was accused of tax fraud. It is worth noting that, contrary to Le Pen, Cahuzac resigned when the scandal came to light. Likewise, when in 2017, French authorities launched an investigation into the centrist MoDem party for similar accusations (albeit less severe), several party members resigned from their ministerial positions, including François Bayrou, who was serving as Minister of Justice at the time. MoDem's leadership cooperated with the investigation and Bayrou, despite facing charges, emphasised the importance of respecting judicial decisions before and after the verdict.

Le Pen further claims that the nature of timing of the verdict was designed to damage her political career — she is widely considered the favourite for the 2027 presidential election — although the latest of this decision is due in part to her camp’s many appeals, without which it would certainly have been rendered earlier.

Aside from the hypocrisy, the tone of her rhetoric, and that of RN party president Jordan Bardella, is concerning and not a little reminiscent of the language coming from the current incumbent of the White House.

It is not infrequent for people on the wrong side of a legal decision to claim their innocence, but rather than discuss the substance of the case, statements from Bardella, who laments “the tyranny of the judges,”  seek to undermine judicial independence itself, presenting the courts not as an important counterweight in any functional democracy, but as a sinister deep-state apparatus.

Le Pen also claims in vague terms that "they stole the legislative elections through scandalous manoeuvres, and we won’t let the French people be robbed of the presidential election.” The word "they" implies a vast conspiracy where all her opponents are working together, which is obviously not true (apart in the specific and exceptional case of the republican front), and presents herself as the “people’s choice.”

Other shrill, Trumpian cries from high-ranking party officials (“French democracy has been executed”, “the judicial branch has seized power”), while effective at rallying their political base, serve to discredit the institutions that challenge them. This persecution narrative undermines the rule of law, delegitimises independent oversight, and damages the broader democratic culture. Democracy is not just about elections; it depends on shared norms of forbearance.

Le Pen, of course, revealed on the evening of the verdict that she plans to appeal, and the appeals court has helpfully said that it would render a verdict by the summer of 2026, meaning that Le Pen could run in the 2027 presidential elections if she is acquitted.

The paradox of simultaneously claiming that the judiciary is trying to block her access to power while also apparently placing her faith in an appeal process that would presumably only work if the system were capable of impartiality is another typically Trumpian move. Much like election denial, it’s head I win, tails you lose: any unfavourable result becomes suspect, while any favourable one vindicates her. 

The campaign on mainstream and social media that the RN and its supporters immediately unleashed, as well as the demonstrations she called for, will only put more pressure on judges to lift her ineligibility — to avoid civil unrest or threats of personal violence — thus bringing into being the politicisation of the justice system that she accuses her opponents of.