Marine Le Pen Stokes Supporters at Paris Rally as Polling Shows Her Leading Presidential Race Despite Embezzlement Conviction

France’s National Rally party chief, Marine Le Pen, preparing to appeal her two-year sentence for embezzlement, gathered with thousands of supporters at Paris Sunday as polling shows she would win the 2027 election if it were held today. Speaking with party operatives six-rows deep flanking her onstage, Ms. Le Pen accused European and national party leaders of prosecuting right-wing candidates like Italy’s Matteo Salvini in an attempt to ban them from participating in elections. Ms. Le Pen’s conviction bars her from running for office for five years. She will be able to retain her parliamentary seat, however.“I assert that this political decision not only violated the rule of law, but also the rule of democracy so that I would have to be eliminated from political life, without any possible recourse,” she said. Last week, Ms. Le Pen was found guilty, along with eight parliamentarians and a dozen assistants, of using European Parliament money to pay party staff members.On Friday, President Trump called the conviction a “witch hunt” and an attempt at “lawfare to silence free speech” and censor political opponents. “It is the same ‘playbook’ that was used against me by a group of Lunatics and Losers,” he said. Mr. Trump was convicted last June on 34 counts related to falsifying business records related to his attorney, Michael Cohen’s 2016 payments to an adult film star to keep her quiet over their alleged affair.France’s Prime Minister, Francois Bayrou, criticized Mr. Trump, accusing him of interfering in French domestic affairs. “There are no longer any borders for major political debates. What happens here is relayed to Washington,” he told a French newspaper, Aujourd’hui, adding that Sunday’s demonstration in support of Ms. Le Pen is “neither healthy nor desirable.”Ms. Le Pen’s party won 37 percent of the vote in legislative elections held last summer, claiming the second highest number of seats in Parliament. The party also won 31 percent in European elections. Ms. Le Pen said despite those sizable pluralities, “we are deprived of the slightest function in the National Assembly or the European Parliament, by the very people who give lessons in democracy morning, noon and night?”According to several scenarios offered in a poll conducted by French media sources, Ms. Le Pen, her protégé, Jordan Bardella, and her party would earn between 31 to 36 percent in the first round of presidential voting in the 2027 election.Nonetheless, Mr. Bayrou suggested that politicians like Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Trump, and their allies were flouting democratic establishments once they achieved victory. He likened the behavior to Joseph Goebbels in 1930s Germany.“We suddenly discover that we have changed the world, the model, that, for some countries, the law is now an old moon and that we should be able to do what we want as soon as we have the majority,” he said. During her remarks Sunday, Ms. Le Pen said it was “the defenders of the principle of ‘independence of justice’” who are trying to turn her supporters into second-class citizens.“Some gloomy and intolerant people have been offended that we can gather today in this square, in the capital of our country, as if the right to assemble should also be taken away from us.”

Marine Le Pen Stokes Supporters at Paris Rally as Polling Shows Her Leading Presidential Race Despite Embezzlement Conviction

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