Donald Trump has demanded that France “free” far-right leader Marine Le Pen as he labelled her ban from running for office a “witch hunt”.
Le Pen was found guilty of embezzling EU funds to pay party staff in a court ruling in Paris earlier this week. The National Rally leader, once a frontrunner in the polls for France’s 2027 presidential election, has now been banned from standing – having been handed a four-year prison sentence, two years of which will be served under house arrest and the other two suspended. Le Pen denied all the charges against her.
Taking to his social media platform Truth Social, the US president described the court case as “another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech and censor their Political Opponent, this time going so far as to put that Opponent in prison”.
The 56-year-old leader of France’s National Rally party, set up as the National Front by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972, was also fined $100,000. Although the ban from public office begins immediately, the jail sentence and fine will only be confirmed once Le Pen has exhausted her appeals against the ruling.
Earlier this week, Mr Trump compared himself to Le Pen, describing her ban from holding public office as a “very big deal” and likening it to his own experience with the courts.
The situation in France “sounds very much like this country”, he told reporters in the Oval Office. Mr Trump has consistently presented himself as the target of a government-led “witch hunt” and politically driven prosecutions.
“It is the same ‘playbook’ that was used against me by a group of Lunatics and Losers,” Mr Trump wrote in his latest post on Truth Social. “They spent the last nine years thinking of nothing else, and they FAILED.
“I don’t know Marine Le Pen, but do appreciate how hard she worked for so many years. She suffered losses, but kept on going, and now, just before what would be a Big Victory, they get her on a minor charge that she probably knew nothing about.”
The president added that it is “all so bad for France and the Great French People”, before signing off the post with “FREE MARINE LE PEN!”
Judge Benedicte de Perthuis said Le Pen’s actions had amounted to a “serious and lasting attack on the rules of democratic life in Europe, but especially in France”.
Le Pen stormed out of the court midway through the verdict on Monday. She was driven away from the courthouse, before later taking part in a television interview in which she decried the ruling as a “political decision” and claimed that the “rule of law [had been] completely violated”.
Le Pen is the latest in a series of European hardline politicians for whom Mr Trump has expressed support, including figures in Romania, Hungary, and Germany’s AfD party.
