Le Pen plans politicization as defense at fake jobs trial

There are many things to read on vacation that would be more conducive to escapism. This summer, at the family residence in Brittany, Marine Le Pen stepped back into her past career as a lawyer and studied a case: one that could see her facing up to 10 years’ imprisonment, a €1 million fine and a 5 to 10-year ban on running for office, which would likely hamper her ambition to win the 2027 presidential election. It’s a dense case, and a slowly ticking time bomb that threatens to explode in the far right’s face at a time when it has just received its first glimpse of power.

For 10 years now, Le Pen has seen the judicial investigation into her far-right party’s European parliamentary assistants make progress. The trial, which opened on Monday, September 30, is scheduled to run until November 27 and will focus particularly on her role. Le Pen is one of 25 defendants, as well as the party itself, being tried for “misappropriation of public funds,” “concealment” of this offense, or even for being an “accomplice” to the crime. All of them have been suspected of having taken part in a system aimed at financing the Front National’s (FN, now Rassemblement National, RN) party expenses through the European Parliament, between 2004 and 2016, via hiring parliamentary assistants for FN members of the European Parliament who had instead, effectively, worked on the party’s political activities in France.

In its indictment, issued on September 18, 2023, the Paris prosecutor’s office considered that FN’s alleged misappropriation of public funds was the result of a “centralized system.” The sum misappropriated by this “system,” over the period from 2009-2017, has been evaluated by the European Parliament at €6.8 million.

This case hung over Le Pen throughout her whole stint as the party’s president, from 2011 to 2021, due to the RN’s use of delaying tactics. Ironically, Le Pen has wound up being prevented from fully embracing her role in the fate of France’s new government, as the trial has gotten underway on the eve of the new parliamentary session opening at the Assemblée Nationale, and Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government policy statement.

‘She’s watching everything, everything, everything’

“The timing is appalling. But she thinks she has a lot to say and thinks it’s up to her to say it,” said Alexandre Varaut, who is the keystone of the RN’s defense. Together with Le Pen, Varaut designed the defense from the outset. Yet, as the trial approached, the lawyer sidestepped the issue, and asked Le Pen to give him a chance as a candidate in the European elections. As a result of this pact which has raised questions, Varaut, a courteous lawyer who hails from a faction of the far right aligned with anti-Semitic writer Charles Maurras, became an MEP and spokesman for the RN.

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