(31 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Paris, France – 31 March 2025
1. Far right National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen walking through hall at Paris courthouse with lawyer (right)
2. Le Pen with lawyer walking through hall
3. Le Pen and lawyer getting into lift
4. Le Pen with lawyer walking into courtroom
5. National Rally Mayor of Perpignan and Party Vice President Louis Aliot arriving at courtroom
6. Former National Rally party treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just walking across courthouse hall
7. Defendants walking into courtroom
8. European Parliament’s lawyer Patrick Maisonneuve arriving at courtroom
9. Police officers outside courtroom
10. Policeman outside courtroom
11. Police outside courtroom
12. Le Pen leaving courtroom before sentencing announced
13. Le Pen on footbridge inside courthouse
14. Le Pen exiting building
15. Maisonneuve leaving courtroom
16. SOUNDBITE (French) Patrick Maisonneuve, Lawyer for European Parliament
"I understand that the court is targeting the defence system and the defendants’ attitude during the hearings. It’s something that we saw over the course of the three months that the trial lasted, we’d noted that they were systematically denying what had happened at the time and I am convinced that the court really took into consideration this situation, this posture of denial, saying, ‘since you remain in total denial, the court believes there is a risk of repeating the offense and so this sentence barring her from running for office will be enforced right away."
17. Aliot leaving courtroom
18. Saint-Just leaving
STORYLINE:
A French court has barred National Rally party leader, Marine Le Pen, from seeking public office for five years for embezzlement in a hammer blow to the far-right leader’s presidential hopes.
Although she can appeal the verdict, such a move won’t suspend her ineligibility and could rule her out of the 2027 presidential race.
The court ruling was a political as well as a judicial temblor for France, hobbling one of the leading contenders to succeed President Emmanuel Macron at the end of his second and final term, scheduled to last into 2027.
Le Pen has described such a scenario as a “political death.”
Le Pen’s lawyer said she would appeal the verdict, but she will remain ineligible while she does and so could be ruled out of the 2027 presidential race.
She was also sentenced to two years under house arrest.
Le Pen herself wasn’t around to hear the chief judge pronounce the sentence that threw her career into a tailspin.
By then, she’d already strode out of the courtroom, when the judge first indicated that the 56-year-old would be barred from office, without saying straight away for how long.
AP video shot by: Nicolas Garriga and Alex Turnbull
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