Billionaire and Trump administration minister at DOGE – the Government Efficiency Office aimed at cutting spending – Elon Musk made a scathing comment on a French court’s decision to bar Marine Le Pen from running for president in 2027.

As a reminder, the leader of France‘s National Rally (RN) party was found guilty today, Monday 31 March, of “embezzling public money” and the court announced that Marine Le Pen will not be able to run for public office for five years, as she has been deprived of political rights with immediate effect.

As a result, she loses the right to run in the next election.

She was also given a four-year prison sentence, two of which were suspended and the other two under house arrest with a electronic bracelet, as well as a fine of 100,000 euros.

Along with Le Pen, the court found eight MEPs from her party guilty of embezzling 474,000 euros. At the same time twelve assistants of the MEPs were found guilty of receiving illegal goods. All the elected officials involved in the case were also sentenced to be deprived of the right to stand for election.

International support

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro told Reuters news agency today that the sentence that deprives Marine Le Pen the right to seek public office is “left-wing judicial activism.“

“This decision is clearly left-wing judicial activism. Wherever the right is present, the left and the system will try to take their opponents out of the game,” Bolsonaro said in an interview. “Here and in France, it’s about instrumentalising justice,” he added. “But it seems that this is spreading around the world. The left has found an easy way to stay in power by resorting to judicial activism.“

Their support for Marin Le Pen after her conviction by the Paris court expressed political parties and persons from both in France and in the rest of Europe.

The first international reaction came from Moscow, where Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Petskov said that “more and more European capitals are choosing the path of violating the rules of democracy“.

In the same vein, Hungary‘s Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared solidarity with Le Pen; in Italy, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said the French court’s decision “was inspired by the European Union and constituted a declaration of war on the part of Brussels“; and the Dutch politician Gert Wilders said he was “shocked” by the “extremely harsh decision of the French court“.

Inside France

Inside France, almost all the personalities on the right expressed their support for Marine Le Pen, led by her party president Jordan Bardella, who said that “today, Marine Le Pen was not unjustly condemned, but the French Republic was executed“.

On the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon said that “politicians are judged at the ballot box“.

Moreover, even French Prime Minister François Bayrou said he was “troubled by the decision” of a Paris court.

The leader of the parliamentary group of conservative Republicans, Loran Vuki, also criticized the court ruling. “The decision to convict Marine Le Pen is serious and unprecedented,” he said.

He said it was not healthy for a democracy to ban an elected politician from running in elections. “Political debates should be decided at the ballot box by the French people.“

Bardela calls for “popular and peaceful mobilisation”

National Rally (RN) President Jordan Bardella called on Monday for a “popular and peaceful mobilization” in response to the conviction of his party leader, Marine Le Pen, who was convicted today of embezzling money and banned from running in France’s 2027 presidential election.

“The provisional conviction of Marine Le Pen, which prevents her from running in 2027, is a democratic scandal. Through our popular and peaceful mobilisation, let’s show them that the will of the people is stronger,” he said in a message to X, which was accompanied by a link to a petition on the party’s website – which denounces the “dictatorship of judges“.