Far-right fake jobs trial: Marine Le Pen’s malign offensive

Since the prosecutor’s requested sentence was given, at the Paris courthouse on Wednesday, November 13, Marine Le Pen has been waging an intense communication campaign, in an attempt to discredit the justice system and transform the trial about far-right Front National – now the Rassemblement National (RN) – party’s MEP assistants into a political trial, one whose sole aim would allegedly be to exclude her from political life by disqualifying her from being elected to public office. Five years’ imprisonment, of which three years would be suspended sentence; a €300,000 fine; and a five-years ban on holding office have been requested against her, effective immediately. It’s “a political death sentence,” she said, on Friday, November 15.

For Le Pen, who has been seeking respectability since 2022, this offensive is first and foremost a spectacular admission of weakness. Throughout the trial, the 27 defendants in this case have appeared powerless to contest the existence of the systemic and massive misappropriation of public funds, organized by party co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, and then by his daughter Marine, by, from 2004 to 2016, almost exclusively redirecting the services of MEP assistants to their party and its leaders.

Since the December 9, 2016, “Sapin 2” law was passed, the penalty of a ban on holding office has been mandatory for this type of offence. Having regularly denounced judicial leniency, and called for stepping up mandatory minimum sentences or even the immediate enforcement of sentences, the RN leaders’ contestation of the rigor of the law when they themselves are implicated is inappropriate – unless they believed there were two types of justice, one for the weak and another for the strong.

Le Pen is using her political capital, both the millions of votes she represents and also the clout the RN has acquired in the Assemblée Nationale, to influence the course of justice. The criminal court’s decision is expected for early 2025, and it will be up to the court to decide whether or not to follow through with the prosecutor’s requests. The key question concerns the immediate enforcement of the ban on election to office. If confirmed, this would prevent Le Pen from running in the 2027 presidential election, no matter the outcome of any appeals she may lodge.

Misjudging the danger

Whatever its decision, the court is now already caught up in a trap, one made up of pre-organized political hype: If it shows more clemency than the requested sentence, Le Pen will be delighted to have won the round. If, on the other hand, it confirms or toughens it, it will be accused of having depriving the French people of their free expression.

The offensive is all the more malign as it’s taking place amid a climate of growing contestation of the rule of law, fuelled by the far-right, and, more recently, by part of the right wing. Popular sovereignty is increasingly being pitted against the judiciary, which is allegedly hindering it.

Very imprudently, former interior minister Gérald Darmanin saw fit to declare that it “would be deeply shocking if Marine Le Pen were deemed ineligible, and thereby unable to stand before the vote of the French people.” To say this is to misjudge the danger, to refuse to see that those who, while in opposition, attack the judiciary are the same people who, once they are in charge, do everything they can to subjugate it. The evolutions of what are described as illiberal democracies, as well as that which is taking shape in the US, are chilling demonstrations of this.