From the front row in the Paris court, Marine Le Pen glared at Judge Bénédicte de Perthuis for 90 minutes. Then, she had had enough.
Grim-faced, Le Pen whispered to her lawyer then stood and walked out of the Palais de Justice into the Paris sunshine. The gates of the Élysée Palace in 2027 had just been slammed shut for the frontrunner in the next presidential election.
Before she walked out, de Perthuis, flanked by her two juniors, had already pronounced Le Pen, twice the runner-up in presidential elections, guilty of heading a fake jobs scam that had netted nearly €3 million of European parliament funds that were illicitly used to run the National Rally.
Then the 62-year-old judge turned to the sentence. As ringleader of an 11-year fraud, Le Pen could expect an immediate ban on standing for election, de Perthuis said. By the time Le Pen, 56, and half a dozen of her co-accused were back at the Rally headquarters, Judge de Perthuis had unleashed her full bombshell: five years’ ineligibility plus two years in home detention and a €100,000 fine.
That meant that unless an appeal court reverses the sentence after a new trial next year, Le Pen is barred from the 2027 race. The latest poll shows her winning up to 37 per cent in the first round of that election — 15 points higher than her score in 2022 when she was defeated by President Macron, who had won only 28 per cent in the first round that year.
Le Pen was defiant as she denounced the verdict last night as a “political decision” and promised it would not end her political career.
“Millions of French people are going to be deprived of the candidate who is the favourite for the presidential election,” she said. “Millions of French people are outraged.”
Twenty four defendants were convicted, with Catherine Griset, 52, an MEP who is Le Pen’s best friend and close aid, barred for two years from standing for election. Louis Aliot, 55, her former domestic partner, an extrovert rugby fan who is mayor of the southern city of Perpignan, was given 12 months’ home detention and an election ban suspended pending appeal.
• Marine Le Pen: Trial verdict is life or death for our movement
Yann Le Pen, Marine’s older sister and mother of Marion Maréchal, a hard-right star and rival to Le Pen, was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and a suspended two-year bar from election.
The Rally and its supporters voiced instant outrage at what they called a political “execution” by left-wing judges. Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old protégé who has been running the party under Le Pen’s command since 2022, set the tone for a partisan response. “Today it is not only Marine Le Pen who was unjustly convicted: It was French democracy that was killed,” he said. Bardella called for peaceful demonstrations. On X, he wrote. “With our popular and peaceful mobilisation, let’s show them that the will of the people is stronger.”
Disbelief echoed from the courtroom to the corridors of the National Assembly. Guilty verdicts had been widely expected, given the damning evidence presented at the trial, but few imagined that the judges would opt for the maximum of an immediate election ban.
Under normal French practice, criminal sentences under appeal are not applied unless they are confirmed after a full new trial. Sympathy came from the conservative world outside the populist right. Laurent Wauquiez, the leader of the conservative Republicans party, a component in the minority government, said the verdict put “a very heavy weight on our democracy”.
Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, condemned the ban on Tuesday, saying it disenfranchised millions of people.
“I don’t know the merits of the accusations against Marine Le Pen, or the reasons for such a strong decision,” Meloni, leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, told the Il Messaggero daily. “But I think that no one who cares about democracy can rejoice at a sentence that targets the leader of a major party and deprives millions of citizens of representation.”
Meloni’s deputy, Matteo Salvini, the League leader, had on Monday called the sentence a “declaration of war by Brussels”.
“In Paris they condemned Marine Le Pen and would like to exclude her from political life. A bad film that we are also seeing in other countries like Romania,” wrote Salvini on social media.
He called it a “declaration of war by Brussels, at a time when the war instincts of von der Leyen and Macron are frightening. We don’t let ourselves be intimidated, we don’t stop: full speed ahead my friend!”
The Kremlin piled in too, with Dmitry Peskov, President Putin’s spokesman, deploring a blow to democracy. “More and more European capitals are going down the path of violating democratic norms,” he said.
Support from the Trump administration came from the United States when Elon Musk, the president’s billionaire lieutenant, posted on his X platform: “When the radical left can’t win via democratic vote, they abuse the legal system to jail their opponents.”
A US state department spokeswoman told reporters: “Exclusion of people from the political process is particularly concerning given the aggressive and corrupt lawfare waged against President Trump here in the United States.”
MPs in Macron’s centrist Renaissance bloc, however, said there was nothing unjust about a trial that had demonstrated serious wrongdoing and ended with punishment dictated by the law.
Judge de Perthuis said judges were aware that their decision would have a great impact on French public life but they were bound by the law and could not make exceptions for politicians.
Le Pen, who took over the party leadership in 2011 when she was an MEP, inherited the system from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party founder, the judge said.
She also noted that none of the defendants were accused of personal enrichment, though the diverted funds had helped pay their salaries and ensured comfortable lives for them.
Announcing Le Pen’s appeal, Rodolphe Bosselut, her lawyer, said the judges had played fast and loose with the law and “tried to criminalise” her defence tactics in the trial.
In Le Pen’s absence, Bardella, her anointed dauphin, should logically run for president in her place. The articulate MEP is popular with younger Rally supporters but party rivals doubt the two-term MEP has the experience to claim the post of head of state.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, a former MEP, said: “I have no idea whether Marine Le Pen was scamming the European parliament. I do know that banning leading candidates on technicalities is what autocracies do.”
Le Pen has not been stripped of her parliamentary seat for a northern constituency, leaving her free to lead her MPs, who are the biggest bloc from any party in the National Assembly. She will not be able to stand for re-election in the event that President Macron calls another snap election.
Elon Musk wrote on X: “When the radical left can’t win via democratic vote, they abuse the legal system to jail their opponents. This is their standard playbook throughout the world.”
Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president, echoed the sentiment, calling the court ruling “left-wing judicial activism”.
“Wherever the right-wing is present, the left and the system will work to get their opponents out of the game,” he said.
Last week, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that Bolsonaro will stand trial for allegedly conspiring to overthrow the government after he lost the 2022 election. If found guilty in the court proceedings, he could face a lengthy prison sentence.
