Trump, le Pen and the legal war on politics

A few days ago, Raphaël Glucksmann, a French Member of the European Parliament and co-president of the left-wing Place Publique party, proposed that the United States return the Statue of Liberty to France. 

In a speech on March 16, he argued that the US, under the Trump administration, no longer embodies the values of democracy and freedom that the statue represents. 

Glucksmann said, “We’re going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, ‘Give us back the Statue of Liberty.’ We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So it will be just fine here at home.”

Be careful what you wish for.  It looks like France is in need of some liberty itself, after a first-tier judge in Paris ruled that Marine le Pen, the most popular politician in France, ahead in all polls, was ineligible to run for president in 2027. She was disqualified for using European Parliament-financed assistants to do political work for her National Rally political party. It is about as shocking as discovering gambling in Rick’s Casablanca café: a trivial and technical violation of a law unobserved by anyone. Lawfare French style – une guerre juridique. 

Is France a democracy? The question is being asked. Many American innovations are enthusiastically embraced here, despite the anti-American rhetoric of Monsieur Glucksmann. The French eat a million meals a day at McDonald’s, restore old American cars like Cubans, and in this case the political blob, fearing they might not beat le Pen at the voting urns, have employed the judiciary to render her hors de combat.

Donald Trump described le Pen’s conviction as a “very big deal” during a press interaction at the White House. “It’s very serious. But she’s banned from running for five years, even though she’s the leading candidate.” He compared it to the lawfare he had experienced himself. “It looks like this country, it really looks a lot like this country.” 

Elon Musk on X denounced the verdict as an “abuse of the legal system” by the “radical left.” He wrote, “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.” In a follow-up post, he predicted: “This will backfire, like the legal attacks against President Trump,” suggesting that the ruling could galvanize le Pen’s support, much as he believes Trump’s legal woes bolstered his base.

Le Pen will not go to prison but must wear an ankle bracelet for two years, which is simply a humiliation, because her Gendarmerie bodyguards are with her at all times. At least misery loves company. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy has one, too.

I don’t believe le Pen knows how to give up. She’s not a great political philosopher, orator or media performer.  But she is perspicacious.  She is going to fight back and put the international reputation of France at issue. Hungarian prime minister Victor Orbán has already X posted, “Je suis Marine.”  She is used to carrying on after setbacks, throwing herself into repeated presidential bids, and getting closer every time. As she fights back in parliament and through legal appeals she might well grow politically stronger than ever. She breeds Bengal cats and like them has sharp claws and many lives.

Whether you agree with her or not, she is an extraordinarily resilient politician. She has dragged her party to the centre ground from dubious origins. It’s become a hybrid centrist party, squishy left on economics, harder right on immigration, integration and law and order.

All criminals need to face the law but if laws are not applied equally and with the same rigour, that makes it a problem. I’m sure the French Magistrates’ Union, a very left-leaning bunch, were celebrating yesterday. 

Yet, “every single political group, every single national delegation, has violated the same rule that Ms. le Pen did – the employment of staff to work on non-EP related affairs,” said Connor Allen, a former Parliamentary Assistant in the European Parliament, following Marine le Pen’s disqualification from the French presidential race. 

So why was the National Rally, challenging the political establishment, chosen to be dragged through this and even if she’s technically guilty, why this disproportionate penalty? The answer is that the French legal system has an agenda. It is deeply political and unashamedly leftist, so much so that its main magistrates’ union was discovered to have a “Wall of Jerks” (Murs des cons) in their office, with pictures of right-wingers they intended to take down.

Le Pen supporters see a trend. The global instrumentalization of the judicial system to attack challenger political movements. Trump, Brazil, Romania and Italy – prosecutors always targeting parties on the right.

There was fist bumping in the smarter Paris quartiers at the spectacle of vanquished, a furious Madame le Pen storming out of court. Although by the evening she’d regained her composure.

The guilty verdict, she said, was no longer just a legal matter – it was a democratic scandal. She accused the judiciary of acting with political intent, claiming the presiding judge had explicitly said her candidacy would cause a disturbance to public order. That, le Pen argued, was an admission that the point of the ruling was to block her from winning the presidency. 

She accused the courts of bypassing the fundamental principle of double degré de juridiction – the right to appeal – and condemned the use of exécution provisoire as an authoritarian tactic. “Where else does a first-instance judge get to override the electorate?” she asked, comparing her disqualification to the imprisonment of Navalny in Russia and political opponents of Erdoğan in Turkey. She also called out the Syndicat de la Magistrature for its past statements suggesting that the RN must be stopped from gaining power. “This isn’t justice,” she said. “It’s politics, and the magistrate said so.” 

A point well made. How is this compatible with democracy when a low-level judge can tell voters who they are allowed to vote for? 

The 2027 French presidential election is now at peak variable geometry. If le Pen’s disqualification stands she will probably be succeeded as her party’s presidential candidate by Jordan Bardella, who is 29 years old, has considerable political talent. 

Bardella was in Israel last week calling the holocaust the worst crime ever committed by humanity and renouncing his own party’s founding father Jean-Marie le Pen, who called the holocaust a footnote of history. A talented politician with three million followers on his numerous social media accounts, Bardella is incredibly young to contend for such a position. He would be the youngest president in the history of republican France. The incumbent Emmanuel Macron was thought precocious when he was elected aged 39.  As a historical footnote, William Pitt the Younger, who had his own issues with the French, became prime minister at 24. Bardella is a smooth operator and is hugely popular with young people and women of all ages who judge him easy on the eye. His pretty girlfriends are the subject of frenzied gossip in the French “people” press, Gala and Closer.

She is ferocious and the most resilient politician in her country. Like Donald J. Trump, she knows how to fight, fight, fight.