Le Pen guilty of 'organised, optimised and systematised embezzlement of 4.6m euros of public funds'

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00:00For more on this story, we can bring in Andrew Smith, lecturer in liberal arts at Queen Mary

00:05University of London. Thank you so much for joining us on the programme today. Now, the

00:10Le Pen family is no stranger to losses in court. Marine Le Pen is promising to fight this conviction,

00:16but what are her options here? Well, as you say, it's a really challenging one because

00:23this is something where, you know, she has been tried, it's been a long trial,

00:28she's stood alongside 24 other defendants, and they have been found guilty with this extraordinary

00:36punishment that has been brought down. But I think the really important thing is that,

00:39you know, it's not a punishment which has been targeted at her as an individual. It's not because

00:44of her prominence, it's not because of her, you know, political significance. It's because,

00:49as the court said, there's an organised, optimised and systematised embezzlement

00:53of public funds which has taken place. Up to €4.6 million of public money embezzled in around

01:0040 fictitious contracts. But that's really important because I think that's ultimately

01:04what we need to stress here. Any appeal that she wants to make would be about her own political

01:09ambitions. I think the really important thing at the heart of this is we're dealing with an issue

01:14of justice. So there are strategies that you could try to use. Of course, you know, there's an

01:19unclear route of appeal around this, but it could, you know, it might go to the constitutional court,

01:24it might go elsewhere. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to come in first to tell you that defence.

01:29But ultimately, you know, it could take maybe a year to hear an appeal, and that would still

01:35take us before the 2027 presidential. So I think there will be every avenue explored by the far

01:42right as they try to really fight back against, you know, the legitimate organs of the state

01:47which are enforcing the law of the land. Andrew, I covered the national rally the day after they

01:53lost the last national election in 2022, and there was this mood of celebration. They were just

01:59looking at the figures and showing me that they got the next election, 2027, in the bag, based on

02:05the trends. Can they get there without Marine Le Pen in the picture? It's a really good question.

02:11Just Sunday, there was an e-poll by the Journal de Dimanche, which I think had 34 to 37 percent

02:19of voting intentions in the first round of a, you know, positive 2027 election. Now, that's a

02:25really challenging one because the party has always been, you know, its initials now are RN,

02:30but they could always well have been Le Pen. Right from its very start, this has been a vehicle,

02:36first of all for Marine Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and then for Marine Le Pen herself.

02:41It has all been extremely vertical in terms of how it has been organized. Now, of course, there's

02:46a putative kind of dauphin. There is somebody there waiting, which is Jordan Bardella, the

02:51president of the party, the 31-year-old far-right figure who was the sort of almost designated

02:57prime minister if Le Pen was to become president. Now, it may well seem that the party is set to

03:04look to him, but really there's been a big, I think, blind spot here, which is that this is

03:10a party which has never done well except when it is kind of allied to that one Le Pen sort of

03:19name, that one Le Pen brand, you know, right from the splits, the Bruno May split in the 1990s,

03:25and all that, you know, beforehand as well. It's always been this idea of an internal civil war

03:31is never far away. Now, as a potential appeal rumbles on, as they start to position for who

03:38they will put forward in 2027, I wonder if there may be cracks that start to appear. Bardella is

03:43only 31. There'll be others within the party who think, has he earned his shot? There'll be others

03:47who look at him and say, is he too much trying to unite the right and move away from what the

03:52party was trying to do? There is still a lot of road to run in terms of what might happen

03:56politically. Marine Le Pen has been credited, as you said, of cleaning up the party from the days

04:02of her father. Can she use this conviction to her advantage and potentially boost the support

04:08of the National Rally? Well, she's talked about trying to clean up her party, but she also talked

04:12about, you know, corruption in French politics. She's been, you know, right from 2002 onwards,

04:16she has been a really strong voice saying, oh, there's corruption, oh, it must be pursued,

04:21absolutely to the letter of the law, except maybe not hearing so much of that today. And I think

04:25that's really quite important. If we look at a list of her supporters, it's really a map of

04:31illiberalism. You know, we talk about divided powers between an executive, a legislative,

04:36and a judiciary. And we see this rolling kind of list of support from illiberal parties elsewhere

04:42on the far right, whether it be in Moscow, whether it be, you know, Viktor Orban, whether it be

04:48Matteo Salvini in Italy, et cetera, et cetera, Geert Wilders. And even in, even within France,

04:54you know, we've seen Mélenchon has said, well, we don't like her, but we don't like the ruling

04:58and other kinds of things like that. I think there is really a dividing line here about this

05:03idea of the support for liberal democratic institutions. Those that call it governance

05:08by judges and all the rest of it are pushing back against the foundations of the republic itself.

05:12This is the law being exercised equally for all. And I think that's really important. She's not

05:18the first to face this. She's not the only one to face this type of punishment. And she's facing it

05:23because she was at the head of a system designed to embezzle public funds. And that's really the

05:29important element of this. We've had, as you mentioned, a lot of reaction coming in from

05:34within France and internationally. Let's talk about Eric Ciotti, the politician on the right,

05:41who said that France is not a democracy. We've had reaction coming in from Hungary's Viktor Orban,

05:46who's posting Je suis Marine on his ex account. Will she be viewed as a victim amongst the

05:52European far right? I think she'll certainly be portrayed as a victim amongst the European

05:58far right. And we know this is a system which already has its American mirror in the response

06:04to Trumpist, you know, witch hunt. I mean, essentially what Donald Trump said, that all

06:12the cases against him were witch hunters. Same thing for her. The language of witch hunt,

06:17the language of, you know, being persecuted because people disagree with you. And I think

06:22what's really important is the defence of the law as it is written. And that is really what this

06:27is about. So regardless of the noise that comes from supporters on the liberal wing of the far

06:32right and even the left, I think this is a really important element that actually what needs to

06:37count is justice. Let's talk about the National Rally currently in Parliament right now, because

06:45they're not part of the government, but they have been propping up the government. So what happens

06:50now? Do they still continue playing ball? It's going to be a really challenging one. I've got to presume

06:55part of that's what's happening right now at the headquarters of the National Rally. You know, they've

06:59propped up the government on key issues. They've consistently been trying to normalise their party.

07:04And of course, they face the normal execution of justice as it takes place. But one of the things

07:08they've also done is been calling for, you know, new legislative election and pushing back against

07:14the Prime Minister on key issues. Now, the thing they do not want, if this ruling stands,

07:20and it isn't appealed very quickly, is fresh legislative election, because that would mean

07:24that Mary Le Pen would very possibly lose her seat, very likely lose her seat, because she

07:28couldn't take part in it. She maintains her mandate right now as a deputy, but she would not if there

07:34were fresh legislatives. So the party is going to have to pivot in terms of its strategy in the

07:39Assembly, in terms of what it's trying to do. And it will presumably continue to try and present

07:44itself as being somehow victimised and, you know, the kind of cry bully strategy of the far right

07:50that we've seen so often in terms of the National Assembly, causing chaos, profiting from it and

07:56trying to sit back when the going gets tough in order not to play a constructive role, but a

08:01destructive role in terms of criticising and maligning democratic political institutions

08:06of the Republic. Andrew Smith, thank you very much for your analysis today. Thank you.

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