In a chilling glimpse of how the U.S. 2024 presidential election could have panned out, French leader Marine Le Pen has been banned from running for president in France by a weaponized court.
Le Pen, head of France’s right-wing National Rally Party and the main rival of liberal French President Emmanuel Macron, reacted to the ruling in a new interview with TF1.
The court accused Le Pen and others in her party of misusing $4.9 million of European Union (EU) funds.
The funds were designated to aid legislators in the European Parliament.
However, the court ruled that Le Pen used the funds to pay party staffers uninvolved in work for the EU parliament.
By convicting Le Pen guilty of the charges, the judges barred the National Rally Party leader from running in the 2027 French presidential election.
She is now banned from running for public office for five years.
“I perfectly understood that the court president was explaining that she was issuing a political ruling,” Le Pen stated.
“The magistrate made it very clear that enforcing the temporary sentence barring me from seeking public office rendered my appeal void and would prevent me from running and getting elected, she said, in the presidential election.
“There are millions of French people who are outraged, outraged to an unbelievable extent when they see that, in France, the country of human rights, judges were implementing practices that we thought were typical of authoritarian regimes,” she continued.
“I think the judges got it wrong,” she said.
“I think they chose to ignore all of the explanations that were given because, in the very first hours of this trial, I had understood that the court was biased against us.
“I did not think the magistrates would go this far against our democratic process and interfere this much with the choice of the French.
“Let’s be clear: I have been silenced but it’s the voice of millions of French people that have been silenced as we speak tonight.”
“I’m a fighter,” she declared.
“I’m not going to let myself be eliminated like that.
“I’m going to pursue every avenue of recourse that I can,” she vowed.
“There’s a small path; it may be narrow, but it does exist.
“In fact, I’m going to ask, in the clearest possible way, for the appeal decision to be handed down enabling me to consider running in the presidential election.
“I will always stand by the French.
“Millions of French people believe in me.
“Millions of French people put their trust in me.
“And I’ve come to tell them, ‘I have been fighting for you for 30 years, and I’ve been fighting injustice for thirty years. And so I’m going to keep doing it. And I will do it all the way.’”
WATCH:
Of course, President Donald Trump battled similar attacks during his 2024 presidential run.
The Democrats launched multiple legal attacks that sought to prevent him from running for office.
In particular, the Democrats falsely accused Trump of leading an “insurrection” – a charge that directly attempted to block his presidential run.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars current and former federal, state, and military officials who have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the country from holding office again.
Fortunately, the history books will tell that these fabricated charges failed to stick, and Trump prevailed.
