Array
I’m just going to lay this out here before we get to the court case.
Le Pen beats all other presidential candidates with ease in final poll before expulsion court hearing
Marine Le Pen stands poised to win the 2027 presidential election in France unless the courts disqualify her from running, new polling published just hours before a court hearing to determine her future has shown.
On Sunday, a new Ifop survey for Le Journal du Dimanche showed Le Pen leading in every run-off scenario, making her the undeniable frontrunner and obvious candidate of the right-wing National Rally.
The thing about the court case was not that a French politician was accused of something hinky to do with money – that’s hardly breaking news. No, what raised eyebrows was prosecutors insisting that a guilty verdict in this court case must be accompanied by an immediate FIVE-YEAR BAN from holding public office, meaning it takes effect during the appeal process.
EXCUSEZ-MOI?
Poof. There goes the front-runner if she’s found guilty, unlike, apparently, any French politician before her.
.Should the French court follow a similar path, Le Pen’s supporters — and perhaps many undecided voters — will likely view this as yet another case of overreach by an increasingly politicized judiciary.
Le Pen’s dominance isn’t marginal. Against an array of political opponents, she leads former Macron-appointed prime ministers Édouard Philippe (20–25 percent) and Gabriel Attal (around 20 percent), as well as far-left grandee Jean-Luc Mélenchon (12–13 percent), with ease.
She appears to be far more palatable to the wider electorate than others on the nationalist right, including Reconquête leader Éric Zemmour, who is polling at around 5-6 percent.
So, she’d wipe the floor with all of the establishment EU-blessed figures, which is what French polling is saying at the moment.
This morning?
Le Pen and her peeps are guilty.
National Rally (RN) party leader Marine Le Pen has been found guilty of embezzlement of public funds and was banned from running in elections with immediate execution.
On the morning of March 31, the judge at the Paris court also handed down guilty verdicts to eight other current or former members of Le Pen’s party who, like her, previously served as MEPs in the European Parliament.
According to the court, the politicians set up a system between 2004 and 2016 to funnel €2.9 million from the EP to the headquarters of the RN in Paris.
The court must know how this looks because it issued a ‚This was about the crime, not the politics‘ statement and warned the sentencing part of the proceedings were going to take some time.
.The court stressed that “no one was judged for having done politics”, but that it was about a “system” of embezzlement of public funds.
The BBC had an update just a bit ago.
Breaking
We’ve just had it confirmed that Marine Le Pen has been banned from running for office for five years.
This means she will not be able to contest the French presidential election in 2027.
