US President Donald Trump has thrown his support behind another embattled far-right European leader, backing Marine Le Pen after French presidential hopeful was convicted of embezzlement and barred from political office. <\/p>\n
\u201cFREE MARINE LE PEN,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday, calling the court ruling a \u201cWitch Hunt.\u201d <\/p>\n
The message is the latest high-profile endorsement from his administration of a far-right party in Europe and comes as Trump upends decades of post-World War Two security guarantees towards the continent with his \u201cAmerica First\u201d foreign and trade policies. <\/p>\n
Le Pen\u2019s hopes of becoming France\u2019s president in 2027 were cut short on Monday when a Paris court blocked her from standing for office for five years, after she was found guilty of embezzling European Union funds. The figurehead of the far-right National Rally (RN) party had been seen as the front-runner for the next election, and the ruling has thrown French politics into disarray. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know Marine Le Pen, but do appreciate how hard she worked for so many years,\u201d Trump wrote. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe 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 \u2013 Sounds like a \u2018bookkeeping\u2019 error to me.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is all so bad for France, and the Great French People, no matter what side they are on,\u201d Trump said. <\/p>\n
The presiding judge in Le Pen\u2019s case, B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte de Perthuis, said the politician\u2019s actions amounted to a \u201cserious and lasting attack on the rules of democratic life in Europe, but especially in France.\u201d <\/p>\n
In addition to the ban, she was handed a four-year prison sentence with two years suspended, to be served under house arrest, and a \u20ac100,000 ($108,000) fine. <\/p>\n
Le Pen, the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded her party when it was known as the National Front, slammed the ruling as a purely \u201cpolitical decision\u201d in a television interview, and claimed the \u201crule of law [had been] completely violated.\u201d She plans to appeal, her lawyer said. <\/p>\n
Trump called the conviction a \u201cvery big deal\u201d on Monday, drawing parallels with his own legal entanglements. His comments on Friday went further, with pointed criticism of European politicians. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is 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,\u201d said Trump. <\/p>\n
There is no indication Le Pen will serve time in prison. <\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s sentiment echoes that of his top advisor Elon Musk who also publicly decried Le Pen\u2019s sentence earlier this week, writing on his platform X: \u201cWhen the radical left can\u2019t win via democratic vote, they abuse the legal system to jail their opponents.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Trump administration has railed against perceived attacks on other far-right politicians in Europe, including a court decision to re-run the Romanian presidential election, which saw a surprise win by a far-right candidate. <\/p>\n
The country\u2019s constitutional court voided the initial result after declassified intelligence reports uncovered possible Russian interference in Calin Georgescu\u2019s TikTok-fueled campaign. A re-run is scheduled for May, but Georgescu has been barred from running. <\/p>\n
Vice President JD Vance has also publicly backed far-right groups in Europe, including the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Germany. <\/p>\n
Musk has also backed the AfD, urging Germans to vote for the right-wing group in elections earlier this year, as well as English far-right figure Tommy Robinson. The AfD almost doubled its vote share and surged into second place in the polls, behind the center-right Christian Democratic Union. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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US President Donald Trump has thrown his support behind another embattled far-right European leader, backing Marine Le Pen after French presidential hopeful was convicted of embezzlement and barred from political office. \u201cFREE MARINE LE PEN,\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}