France's Le Pen found guilty in graft trial, barred from running for public office for 5 years

Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, was found guilty of embezzlement by a criminal court in Paris on Monday and immediately barred from running for public office for five years, setting off a democratic crisis in France.

The verdict effectively barred the current front-runner in the 2027 presidential election from participating in it, an extraordinary step but one the presiding judge said was necessary because nobody is entitled to “immunity in violation of the rule of law.”

Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s protégé and a likely presidential candidate in her absence, said on social media, “Not only has Marine Le Pen been unjustly convicted, French democracy has been executed.” Hard-right leaders across Europe, including Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, appeared to agree.

“Je suis Marine!” Orban declared.

However, Sacha Houlié, a centrist lawmaker, asked, “Is our society really so sick that we are going to take offense at what is no more and no less than the rule of law?”

The verdict infuriated Le Pen, an anti-immigrant, nationalist politician who has already mounted three failed presidential bids. Looking grim and murmuring “incredible,” she walked briskly out of the courtroom before the judges had completed reading her sentence.

She did not address the dozens of camera crews outside the courtroom, but she was expected to speak on French television Monday evening. She had spoken of her “serenity” before the hearing but there was little evidence of that.

An opinion poll on the presidential election published Sunday gave Le Pen 34-37% of the vote, more than 10 points ahead of her nearest rival. President Emmanuel Macron is term-limited and cannot run again.

Le Pen has denied any wrongdoing in the case, which involved accusations that her party, the National Rally, illegally used several million euros in European Parliament funds for expenses between 2004 and 2016.

The court also sentenced Le Pen, 56, to four years in prison, with two of those years suspended. The court said the other two could be served under a form of house arrest. She was fined 100,000 euros (about $108,000).

Le Pen’s electoral ineligibility is effective immediately. As a result, only a successful appeal before the 2027 deadline to enter the race would allow her to run.

That is not impossible, but it will be difficult. The appeals process is slow in France, and even if a new trial took take place before the election, it is unclear whether the prosecution’s case would be overturned.

The presiding judge, Bénédicte de Perthuis, acknowledged that a politician prevented from running for office might later win on appeal, and she said the tribunal could not be indifferent to “the need to seek social consensus.”

But the gravity of the case, and the apparent refusal of those accused to acknowledge the facts, made political disqualification necessary, the judge said. The court has to “insure that elected officials, like any citizen, do not benefit from any favorable treatment,” she noted.

The verdict could usher in a period of renewed political turmoil if Le Pen decides to lash out against France’s fragile government or if anger spills over into the streets. The government struggled to pass a budget this year and could still be toppled at any time by lawmakers in the lower house, the National Assembly, where Le Pen’s party is the single largest.

The verdict does not affect her current mandate as a lawmaker in the lower house. But if Macron calls snap parliamentary elections, as he did last year, she will not be eligible to run again. Given the current impasse in a divided assembly, such a dissolution this year is plausible.

Le Pen and her party stood accused of embezzling a sum close to $5 million in European Parliament funds over more than a decade. But the accusations did little to hinder the National Rally’s rise from the fringes of French politics to its heart.

Le Pen has endeavored to rebrand the party, founded in 1972 by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, steering it away from its antisemitic and racist roots. Its platform, however, has remained resolutely hard right, calling for extreme toughness on crime and drastic measures against immigration.

The court ruled that Marine Le Pen had played a “central role” in the scheme to siphon funds from the European Parliament and to fill up its coffers at a time when they were precariously empty. Le Pen was a European lawmaker from 2004 to 2017.

The party used lawmaker assistants who were paid with European Parliament funds to perform tasks for the party that were unrelated to EU business, the court ruled.

Le Pen, a lawyer by training, argued that lawmaker assistants were not direct employees of the European Parliament.

The court disagreed. It also rejected Le Pen’s argument that the case was a political witch hunt.

“No one is on trial for engaging in politics,” de Perthuis said.