President Donald Trump has offered his support to French far-right leader Marine Le Pen demanding she be set ‘free’ while branding her ban from elective office a ‘witch hunt’.
Le Pen, 56, on Monday was convicted of creating fake jobs at the EU parliament and taking advantage of expenses to employ assistants who were actually working for her party in France.
The matriarch of the hard-right National Rally (RN) party was barred from running for office for five years and given a four-year prison sentence, although she will not go to jail as half of it was suspended and the rest will be served with an electronic tag.
In a post to his Truth Social account, Trump wrote: ‘In The 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.’
He went on to add that while he doesn’t know Le Pen personally he does ‘appreciate how hard she worked for so many years’.
The post continued: ‘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.
‘It is all so bad for France, and the Great French People, no matter what side they are on. FREE MARINE LE PEN!’
Trump’s DOGE adviser Elon Musk echoed the American president’s views as he reposted the message on X (formerly Twitter) writing ‘Free Le Pen!’.
Monday’s verdict was seen as a hammer blow to Le Pen’s long-held hopes of ascending to the presidency in 2027.
She was also ordered to pay a $100,000 fine and her party was docked $2 million – half of which must be paid definitively, while the other half would be demanded in the event of a repeat offence.
Le Pen could appeal her sentence. If her bid fails, she will get a four-year prison sentence – two of which were suspended and two to be served under house arrest.
Twenty-four people, including Le Pen, were convicted – all of them RN party officials or assistants. Only one defendant was acquitted of any wrongdoing. Le Pen said she will appeal.
She argued the court should not have made her ineligible to run for office until all her chances at appeal had been exhausted, and that by doing so it was clear the court was aiming ‘specifically to prevent’ her from being elected president.
‘If that’s not a political decision, I don’t know what is,’ Le Pen said in the TF1 interview.
She said the ruling marked a ‘fateful day for our democracy’ but vowed to keep pursuing what she called the now ‘admittedly narrow’ path to the presidency.
‘There are millions of French people who believe in me, millions of French people who trust me,’ she added.
‘For 30 years I’ve been fighting for you, and for 30 years I’ve been fighting against injustice, so I’m going to continue fighting.’
She is allowed to keep her seat in the French Parliament.
Earlier this week, Trump compared himself to convicted French presidential candidate, calling her ban from elective office a ‘very big deal.’
‘That’s a big deal. That’s a very big deal,’ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
He expressed sympathy for Le Pen and said her situation ‘sounds very much like this country.’
‘That’s a big deal. That’s a very big deal,’ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
He expressed sympathy for Le Pen and said her situation ‘sounds very much like this country.’
‘I know all about it, and a lot of people thought she wasn’t going to be convicted of anything and I don’t know that it means conviction but she was banned for running for five years and she’s the leading candidate. That sounds like this country. That sounds very much like this country,’ he added.
Trump has long portrayed himself the victim of a government ‘witch hunt’ and politically motivated prosecutions.
The American president has been subject to many lawsuits from state and federal governments:
He denied wrongdoing in all the cases.
Other officials in the Trump administration have echoed the president’s stance on Le Pen.
US Vice President JD Vance said yesterday that Le Pen was convicted of a very minor offense and barring her from running for office was ‘not democracy.’
‘They’re trying to throw her in prison and throw her off the ballot,’ Vance said in an interview with the Newsmax television channel. ‘Look, that’s not democracy.’
He said Le Pen had been ‘leading in some polls’ for France’s 2027 presidential election and had been convicted of an ‘incredibly minor charge that implicates, by the way, her staff, not even Marine Le Pen herself.’
Musk also slammed the French court’s decision, saying: ‘When the radical left can’t win via democratic vote, they abuse the legal system to jail their opponents. This is their standard playbook throughout the world.’
And State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the department was ‘aware’ of Le Pen’s sentencing.
‘Exclusion of people from the political process is particularly concerning given the aggressive and corrupt lawfare waged against President [Donald] Trump here in the United States,’ Bruce said.
But she declined to comment specifically on Le Pen’s case.
In the face of the widespread criticism of the verdict, one of France’s top two public prosecutors denied there was a political element to Monday’s decision.
‘Justice is not political, this is not a political decision but a legal one, delivered by three independent, impartial judges,’ Remy Heitz told RTL radio station.
It wasn’t just Trump who was critical of the verdict. Other conservative leaders in Europe blasted it.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the ruling against Le Pen disenfranchised millions of voters in France and the EU.
‘I don’t know the merits of the accusations against Marine Le Pen, or the reasons for such a strong decision,’ Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party, told Il Messaggero.
‘But I think that no one who cares about democracy can rejoice at a sentence that targets the leader of a major party and deprives millions of citizens of representation.’
Russia also waded in.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters: ‘More and more European capitals are going down the path of trampling over democratic norms.
‘Of course, we do not want to interfere in France’s internal affairs, we have never done so.
‘But in general, our observations of European capitals show that they are not at all reluctant to go beyond democracy during the political process.’