Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s right-wing National Rally (NR) party, was, on Monday, March 31, convicted of embezzlement and barred from running for office for the next five years. While headlines across Europe and the United States were written with barely constrained joy at her political demise, Le Pen’s story is far from over. And if 2024 delivered any lessons at all in the repercussions of prosecuting populist leaders, the French judiciary may have made a huge miscalculation.
Embezzlement?
Along with a $108,000 fine and a suspended prison sentence, Le Pen is now banned from contesting the 2027 presidential election, in which she was highly likely to succeed. President Emmanuel Macron is term-limited and will not be able to seek a third term; after coming second in those two contests, the NR leader had improved her polling and looked set to…
