{"id":274029,"date":"2025-04-04T13:13:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T13:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/04\/donald-trump-calls-marine-le-pens-conviction-a-witch-hunt-as-judge-given-police-protection\/"},"modified":"2025-04-04T13:13:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T13:13:20","slug":"donald-trump-calls-marine-le-pens-conviction-a-witch-hunt-as-judge-given-police-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/04\/donald-trump-calls-marine-le-pens-conviction-a-witch-hunt-as-judge-given-police-protection\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump calls Marine Le Pen’s conviction a ‘witch hunt’ – as judge given police protection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Donald<\/div>


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US President Donald Trump has described an embezzlement case against Marine Le Pen as a “witch hunt”.<\/p>\n

It comes as the French far-right leader called for protests this weekend over her conviction.<\/p>\n

Ms Le Pen was handed a five-year ban on running for office<\/a><\/strong> after a court found her and two dozen figures from her National Rally (RN) party guilty of embezzling EU funds.<\/p>\n

The conviction will prevent her from running in the 2027 presidential election, where she was hoping to unseat President Emmanuel Macron<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In a Truth Social post late on Thursday, Mr Trump<\/a><\/strong> praised Ms Le Pen and added: “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 – Sounds like a ‘bookkeeping’ error to me.”<\/p>\n

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Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player<\/p>\n

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Marine Le Pen barred from running for office<\/span>
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Mr Trump also compared her situation to his own. Mr Trump was convicted in a New York court over covering up “hush money” payment to a porn star<\/strong><\/a>, and also faced a number of other charges that were dropped following his 2024 election win.<\/p>\n

Ms Le Pen was also given a four-year jail sentence, with two years suspended, and two which will be served with an electronic tag. She is not expected to serve any jail time.<\/p>\n

She also received a \u20ac100,000 (\u00a383,635) fine. She will make an appeal against her conviction, her lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut later said.<\/p>\n

In the days following her conviction, Ms Le Pen and her allies have attacked the “tyranny of judges”, accusing her trial judges of interfering in democracy.<\/p>\n

The lead judge has since had to get police protection following death threats, which Mr Macron said were “unbearable and intolerable”.<\/p>\n

Read more:
European far-right welcomes Trump 2.0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\n Marine Le Pen leaves the courthouse on the day of the verdict of her trial. Pic: Reuters
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Ms Le Pen has called for a peaceful mass protest in Paris on Sunday, which will give an indication of how much popular support there is for her claims of a democratic crisis.<\/p>\n

However, polls suggest a majority of French people don’t see any problem with the court’s decision.<\/p>\n

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Polling expert Gael Sliman said: “They can’t go too far in attacking judges, especially if they want to broaden their appeal. Some of their voters are not anti-establishment.”<\/p>\n

“You can’t steal $4m like that from people. The verdict was fair,” Francoise Bellis, a 77-year old pensioner from Toulon said. She laughed when she heard Russia saying the verdict had “killed democracy” in France.<\/p>\n

“That’s really the pot calling the kettle black,” she added.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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US President Donald Trump has described an embezzlement case against Marine Le Pen as a “witch hunt”. It comes as the French far-right leader called for protests this weekend over her conviction. Ms Le Pen was handed a five-year ban on running for office after a court found her and two dozen figures from her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/25\/03\/768x432\/skynews-paris-lepne-marine-le-pen_6872364.jpg?20250331172741","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1187,2712,51,3319,1163,6896,35881,6273,7829,52,31785],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274029"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274031,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274029\/revisions\/274031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}