By Monica Showalter
French polls show that conservative nationalist Marine Le Pen is the leading candidate for president of France when elections are held in 2027.
It makes sense, given the rising support her National Rally (RN) party garnered in the last National Assembly election, where it became a top vote getter. Parties with that pattern tend to go upwards in successive elections.
Which is precisely why we are seeing what we are seeing now in France — the Full Maduro — the disqualification of Le Pen from running for office, on trumped-up charges of embezzlement over a bookkeeping dispute. It’s outrageous, and about as tinpot-dictatorship as such things get.
It’s exactly what Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro did to his opponent, Maria Corina Machado, last year, when she rose overwhelmingly in the polls against him. She was disqualified, and when she ran an ally instead, the scheme really failed because the ally won bigly, so Maduro’s next move was to try to jail these opponents which he trying to do now.
As for the bookkeeping dispute, that sounds a lot like the clown show in New York, which is what Prosecutor Alvin Bragg and Colombian-American Justice Juan Merchan (whose daughter was raising money for Democrats), tried to do to President Trump. Fortunately, he had good legal representation to thwart the worst of it. Had he not had it, he might have ended up like Le Pen. The left establishment plays for keeps, both in Venezuela and the U.S.
And we have seen many recent cases of political opponents being disqualified from running for office ever since the lawfare on Trump — from the disqualification of Brazil’s popular Jair Bolsonaro, to the full judicial negation of Romania’s election, based on the judges not liking the result of it. It is becoming a new normal now, and France has not been spared.
Le Pen has vowed to appeal, but in France, the deed is done, and the real reason for the charges is obvious enough — to keep her from running for president in 2027.
Like Trump, the French swamp establishment absolutely hates her.
Which has been obvious enough since at least last year.
During June’s legislative elections, President Emmanuel Macron’s party coalition, Ensemble, did poorly, so he forged an alliance with the conventional conservatives, known as Republicans, as well as the radical leftists, known as the New Ecological and Social People’s Union (NUPES), who did well — all to ensure that Le Pen’s party was isolated, despite its broad public support.
Anything to keep her out, including cobbling together an illogical, chaotic ruling alliance.
After that, Macron kept the defense, finance, and foreign affairs portfolios for his own party, handed the immigration portfolio to the conservatives, and tellingly, passed the justice portfolio to the radical leftists who got to work finding a charge to make stick against Le Pen.
And, oh, it was arguable charges, embezzlement, which is explained this way by Reuters:
Le Pen, the National Rally (RN) and two dozen party figures were accused of diverting more than 4 million euros ($4.33 million) of European Parliament funds to pay France-based staff.
They had argued the money was used legitimately and that the allegations had defined too narrowly what a parliamentary assistant does.
Judge Benedicte de Perthuis said Le Pen had been “at the heart” of the scheme.
The court found Le Pen, eight other people who were EU lawmakers at the time and 12 parliamentary assistants guilty of embezzling the EU funds.
The defendants were not accused of pocketing the money, but rather of using EU funds to the benefit of their party.
Like the American judicial hypocrites, the establishment there is harrumphing about threats to “democracy,” CNN continued:
The court’s presiding judge, Bénédicte de Perthuis, said Le Pen’s actions amounted to a “serious and lasting attack on the rules of democratic life in Europe, but especially in France.” She said Le Pen’s immediate ban on standing for office was tied to “democratic public unrest” that would result from the election of a person convicted of embezzlement.
Even CNN could see the writing on the wall:
But the decision itself looks set to spark significant unrest. Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s protégé who succeeded her as RN’s president, said it was not only Le Pen “who is being unjustly condemned: it is French democracy that is being executed.”
A crude German coeval nakedly laid out the real plan:
Juergen Hardt, a senior German lawmaker with Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz’s conservatives, said: “As a Member of the European Parliament, Marine Le Pen saw the European Union only as a self-service store with which she could finance herself and her party.”
“The French court is right to put a stop to her political ambitions,” Hardt said.
And not only is it likely to lead to riots and unrest, the public may well just vote for her anyway in bigger numbers than before. People don’t like lawfare, nor do they like sleazy judges telling them who they can’t vote for. We saw how President Trump’s polling numbers went up with each lawfare outrage, and it’s possible we will see something of the same dynamic in France. Marine may be viewed as a potential Charlotte Corday, just ready with the knife approaching the swamp establishment’s decaying bath tub, and they couldn’t deserve it more.
As history foretells, in France, this judicial overreach and crazed hate for change could get very ugly.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/03/france_goes_the_full_maduro_bans_leading_opposition_frontrunner_marine_le_pen_from_running_for_the_presidency.html
