The Paris prosecutor’s office requested five years in prison, three of which were suspended, as well as five years of ineligibility with provisional execution against him in the trial of the parliamentary assistants of the National Rally. He also requires five years in prison including two convertible farms as well as a fine of 300,000 euros.
“Defend the interests of the French”
We are innocent of the charges against us. There is no fictitious job, since all the assistants have worked. We have not violated any French laws and none of the regulations of the European Parliament,” said Marine Le Pen. “We didn’t get a penny more than we were entitled to for hiring assistants. They have functions which consist of assisting deputies not only in their legislative work but also in their political activity. We simply played politics to defend the interests of the French,” she added.
“My political survival, obviously, will depend on the implementation of this political death sentence, with provisional execution or not,” said Marine Le Pen. “And this is, I believe, the goal since the start of this operation which was launched by a socialist, (Martin) Schulz, (at the time) president of the European Parliament, in agreement with the socialist (Christiane) Taubira , Minister of Justice at the time,” she continued.
By evoking an “outrageous” indictment and “out of all proportion to the slightest indictment of the same type”, the member for Pas-de-Calais expressed a “feeling of revolt”, according to her also felt by “millions of French”, “and even beyond my own political camp, since the indignation aroused by this indictment has in some way crossed the entire political class”.
“The political target” judged
The Macronists Gérald Darmanin, Christian Estrosi and Karl Olive, but also Jean-Luc Mélenchon expressed their reservations regarding the idea of a sentence of ineligibility with immediate effect. “In reality, I realized that it was not the litigant who was being judged, that it was the political target who was being judged,” protested the woman who appeared alongside 24 other defendants, suspected of having hired assistants to MEPs whose missions were in fact for the sole benefit of the far-right party.
