WASHINGTON, March 31 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that French far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s conviction and resulting prohibition from running in the 2027 presidential election was a “very big deal.”
A French court on Monday barred Le Pen from running in the 2027 presidential election after she was convicted of embezzlement.
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“That’s a very big deal,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday evening when asked about that conviction.
Rights advocates have drawn comparisons over the years between Le Pen and Trump over their anti-immigration views and charged rhetoric against minorities.
The French court’s ruling was a setback for Le Pen, 56. The National Rally (RN) party chief is one of the most prominent figures of the European far right, and a front-runner in polls for France’s 2027 contest.
“I know all about it, and a lot of people thought she wasn’t going to be convicted of anything,” Trump said.
“But she was banned for running for five years, and she’s the leading candidate. That sounds like this country, that sounds very much like this country,” Trump said, in an apparent reference to legal cases that Trump himself faced before he took office.
Trump was indicted over covering up a hush money payment to a porn star, over attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election that he lost and over retention of classified documents after his first term ended. He was convicted in the hush money case. He denied wrongdoing in all cases that he called politically motivated.
Federal charges against him were dropped following his 2024 election win.
France’s High Council of the Judiciary in a statement on Monday expressed its concern over what it called “virulent reactions” provoked by the ruling after Le Pen’s allies in France and far-right leaders from European countries condemned it.
“Threats personally targeting the magistrates in charge of the case, just like statements by political leaders on the merits of the prosecution or the conviction, particularly during the deliberations, cannot be accepted in a democratic society,” it said, calling for moderation.
Others applauded the ruling against Le Pen, saying the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law must be respected after the judge convicted her of misappropriating European Union funds to benefit her party
Le Pen’s five-year public office ban cannot be suspended by appeal, although she will retain her parliamentary seat until her term ends. She also received a four-year prison sentence – two years of which are suspended and two years to be served under home detention – and a 100,000-euro ($108,200) fine, but they will not apply until her appeals are exhausted.
(This story has been refiled to remove an extraneous word ‘what’ in paragraph 4)
Reporting by Jeff Mason, writing by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Aurora Ellis
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Jeff Mason is a White House Correspondent for Reuters. He has covered the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden and the presidential campaigns of Biden, Trump, Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He served as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association in 2016-2017, leading the press corps in advocating for press freedom in the early days of the Trump administration. His and the WHCA’s work was recognized with Deutsche Welle’s “Freedom of Speech Award.” Jeff has asked pointed questions of domestic and foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. He is a winner of the WHCA’s “Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure” award and co-winner of the Association for Business Journalists’ “Breaking News” award. Jeff began his career in Frankfurt, Germany as a business reporter before being posted to Brussels, Belgium, where he covered the European Union. Jeff appears regularly on television and radio and teaches political journalism at Georgetown University. He is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a former Fulbright scholar.
Kanishka Singh is a breaking news reporter for Reuters in Washington DC, who primarily covers US politics and national affairs in his current role. His past breaking news coverage has spanned across a range of topics like the Black Lives Matter movement; the US elections; the 2021 Capitol riots and their follow up probes; the Brexit deal; US-China trade tensions; the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan; the COVID-19 pandemic; and a 2019 Supreme Court verdict on a religious dispute site in his native India.
