PARIS — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said on Monday there was “no way” she was leaving politics and planned to fight for her right to run for president after a court barred her from running for public office for five years as punishment for embezzlement.
Crucially, she played down the prospect that she could soon have to pass her mantle over to her 29-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella to stand as the National Rally’s presidential candidate in 2027.
“I’m combative, I won’t let myself be eliminated,” a visibly infuriated Le Pen told broadcaster TF1 on Monday evening, in her first interview since she was sentenced earlier in the day.
Le Pen and 23 others on Monday were convicted of misappropriating funds from the European Parliament and were handed a mixture of fines, suspended prison sentences and bans. The three judge-panel took the extraordinary — though not unprecedented — step of enacting Le Pen’s ban immediately, regardless of whether she appealed.
Despite the seemingly insurmountable odds, Le Pen insisted that standing in the 2027 presidential election — for which she is a frontrunner — remained possible. She urged the justice system to hear her appeal quickly but retrials usually occur several months after the initial verdict, at a minimum, narrowing Le Pen’s window of opportunity.
“There is a small path — it is certainly narrow — but it exists,” Le Pen said.
Le Pen and members the National Rally have framed the court’s decision as a democratic scandal, upending the will of millions of voters who have cast ballots for their party as it has surged in popularity in recent years. That view has been echoed by Elon Musk, adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as the party’s populist allies across Europe.
“This evening, millions of French people are indignant, indignant to an unimaginable extent seeing that in France, the country of human rights, judges have implemented practices that were thought to be the preserve of authoritarian regimes,” Le Pen said.
After the verdict was delivered, the party launched an online petition to “save democracy.”
If Le Pen is unable to run, the most likely backup candidate for the National Rally, would be Bardella, who would have a unique opportunity to capitalize on the far right’s momentum and potentially become the country’s youngest-ever president.
However, Le Pen appeared in no rush to be replaced by her de facto deputy, pointedly declining to endorse him when asked whether he were ready to step up in her place.
“Jordan Bardella is a tremendous asset for the movement. I hope we won’t have to use this asset any sooner than necessary,” the three-time presidential candidate said.
A first indication of the public reaction to the Le Pen verdict came on Monday evening from Pollster Odoxa, which surveyed 995 people representative of the French electorate after the sentencing was announced.
While Le Pen lambasted the verdict as a “political decision” that violated rule of law, the pollster found that 54 percent of respondents said they believed her sentence was a sign that France had a healthy democracy, while 65 percent said they were “satisfied” or “indifferent” to the verdict.
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