In the spirit of April the first, I'll observe that, just as we allow convicted murderers to roam the streets pending an appeal that could take years on the chance that they won't kill anyone, it's entirely reasonable to allow convicted embezzlers to run for public office while appealing their sentence on the chance that they won't embezzle public funds. Though I expect I'll change my mind after noon.
posted by rory at 2:28 AM on April 1

Daily Mash [archive]: Far-right populists look on in horror as Le Pen held to account:

LAW-ignoring right-wing populists across the West are horrified to see France’s functioning legal system convict one of their own.

The decision to bar National Rally leader Marine Le Pen from running in France’s next presidential election has petrified right-wingers who never thought they would see liberal democracy operate as planned in their lifetimes.

Nigel Farage of Clacton said: “So she’s supposed to accept a verdict handed down by a judge and that’s it? No storming of the Palais Bourbon or anything?

“I know France is backwards compared to America, but surely they’re aware no far-right leaders can be convicted just because they’re guilty. How are they meant to win the election and pardon themselves?

posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:55 AM on April 1 [13 favorites]

If we start allowing criminal justice systems to be weaponized for the purpose of bringing criminals to justice, there's no telling where it will end.
posted by flabdablet at 2:57 AM on April 1 [40 favorites]

A few bits to add. National Rally paid off their remaining €6 million loan to a Kremlin-linked Russian bank in 2023 which had become a significant point of criticism because of Ukraine (and Le Pen's former vocal admiration of Putin). The party embezzled €4.1 million from the EU between 2004 and 2016 - using EU party funds to pay for purely French party staff salaries. So there's a direct argument that this embezzlement of EU funds helped get the RN out of debt to Russia and a sticky French political problem. Le Pen was directly in charge of the party management that lead to the embezzlement - she absolutely knew this was happening, it was an intentional and long-standing fraud by her and others in the party, when she has often claimed to be the only non-corrupt French party. She continues to claim the use of EU funds was legitimate, when it is clear cut they were not.

Le Pen often calls for the full weight of the law to be used against the convicted, especially immigrants. Should say, an immigrant have been convicted of embezzling €4m, the reaction from the hard right would no doubt be a mite different.

There was a different case before the French consitutional court that concluded a few days ago that confirmed the French anti-corruption law (passed in 2016) banning a politician from standing for office immediately if convicted of certain crimes, including embezzlement (i.e. not suspended pending appeal) was legal. That no doubt helped confirm this sentence for Le Pen.

The prison sentence and fine for Le Pen (and the various sentences for co-defendants) will almost certainly be suspended when she seeks to appeal this judgment, but the ban on holding public office for 5 years will not.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:12 AM on April 1 [17 favorites]

How's Sarkozy doing these days? Not yet in jail...but also not active in politics?
posted by gimonca at 3:45 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]

Having gone back and looked at the articles of the Lagarde case, I'm not seeing the connection Varoufakis sees other than that both were found guilty of something. Lagarde was both 1) not running for elected office and 2) convicted in relation to her party handling of a case so complicated that it ran on for another five years after her conviction before being abandoned when one of the parties died. Whereas this looks to be a pretty open and shut case on the charges. Le Pen needed some money for FN and so she stole it from the EU.
posted by nangua at 3:54 AM on April 1 [11 favorites]

It's interesting, le Pen's Danish ally Morten Messerschmidt was a met with similar (but far lesser) charges, but was eventually acquitted. The thing is that the case was really badly mangled by the authorities, I think they just gave up.

(nangua, thanks for checking that out. I'm so tired of Varoufakis these days).
posted by mumimor at 4:19 AM on April 1 [2 favorites]

Fascist governments jail their political opponents, but it is also true that democratic governments that don’t jail their fascists don’t stay democracies. (Ask me how I know.)
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:22 AM on April 1 [24 favorites]

Not yet in jail...but also not active in politics?

🎶 I’m not in jail don’t tell me what to belieeeeeeeeve 🎶
posted by en forme de poire at 4:28 AM on April 1

Ian Dunt has now expanded his observations about the coverage of the story.
posted by rory at 4:56 AM on April 1 [7 favorites]

Unherd is not a neutral news source - as I was given to understand it, it’s a culture war propaganda site, stacked with once-left wing writers who have drifted far to the right, like Julie Bindel. This seems to also be Varoufakis‘ trajectory, as he not only compares this to the case mentioned above, but also Erdogan's banning of opposition in Turkey. It’s weird, because you would think that it would be hard to defend a racist fascist caught lying and embezzling money once, let alone twice, but here is Yanis doing it.
posted by The River Ivel at 4:58 AM on April 1 [10 favorites]

Horace Rumpole, it's worth noting that Mein Kampf was written in a prison cell. Being convicted of crimes doesn't seem to be a liability for fascists' future careers.

The one nice thing here is that she's prevented from running in the next election. I suspect she'll be one of those Olly North/G. Gordon Liddy types who goes on the commentary circuit bigging up whatever terrifying maniac the right wing pushes forth in that election.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:20 AM on April 1 [4 favorites]

Ian Dunt has now expanded his observations about the coverage of the story.

That's an excellent piece, well worth reading for its discussion of the media coverage:

This is not the first time this has happened. French politicians are investigated for corruption pretty regularly. A few days ago prosecutors demanded seven years for former French president Nicolas Sarkozy. He is accused of having promised dictator Muammar Gaddafi that he'd improve French-Libyan relations if he funded his election campaign. Look at the news reports. Seriously, have a read - firstly because it's just a straight-up remarkable story and secondly because it is very revealing. Is there any mention of this being an affront to democracy? No. Is there an extensive description of the crimes he is accused of committing? Yes.

In 2011, another dreadful former French president, Jacques Chirac, was found guilty of corruption. The charges are similar to those faced by Le Pen. He was accused of paying members of his party for jobs that did not exist. He was given a two-year suspended prison sentence for diverting public funds and abusing public trust. Fucked around. Got found out. Read the BBC report from the time. Is there any mention of an affront to democracy? No. Is there an extensive description of the crimes he is accused of committing? Yes.

And now let's see how Le Pen's conviction has been covered. I really like Politico's European newsletter. I rely on it extensively - it's an incredible resource. And despite what I’m about to say I’d advise you to sign up to it. But the gap between their story on Sarkozy last Thursday and their newsletter on Le Pen today is incredible. We open with Le Pen in her own words, allowing her chosen message to open the piece. We're then told that she was "a strong contender" to win the French presidency in 2027 and that this ruling means "it's not a popular rejection by the demos". For the record, Le Pen has been rejected by the demos twice, in the French presidential elections of 2017 and 2022. Then we're taken on an extensive tour of every populist, on right and left, who objects to the verdict. On and on it goes, like a dinner party from hell: Geert Wilders, Viktor Orban, Yanis Varoufakis, Donald Trump. A banquet of c****, every one of them giving their two-cents worth...

It's not about all leaders at all, as the coverage of Sarkozy and Chirac shows. It's just about the far-right. For some inexplicable reason, this category of political operator, precisely the sort who used to be held in the most contempt, are now granted the kind of generosity usually reserved for Hollywood celebrities on a press junket. The very worst politicians - the most prejudiced, the most corrupt, the most cynical, the most divisive - they are the ones we treat with kid gloves. We eagerly seek out their narrative and adopt it ourselves. And in the process, we help them dismantle the social norms which hold liberal democracies together.

posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:34 AM on April 1 [32 favorites]

Regardless of whether or not this will actually stop her or her movement, I'm just glad someone's at least trying to enforce the law. Not prosecuting fascists for crimes in the hope that they'll just go away and normal order will be magically restored just hasn't been working.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:34 AM on April 1 [6 favorites]

White supremacy exists to pick people's pockets. It runs on fraud, from Alex Jones' Brainforce to Trump University. David Duke went down on tax fraud- selling copies of Mein Kampf never paid the bills.

Kick em in the money
posted by eustatic at 5:58 AM on April 1 [10 favorites]

French here. I'm actually not sure it's such a good news, as Mme Le Pen had a propensity for bombing debates in the worst way and she's been a serial loser for decades, mostly useful as a boogeywoman to force the left to support "least worst" centrist candidates.

Now that she's out of the picture, the risk is that instead of simply buttressing the not-so-great but acceptable centrist majority, a more competent figure (helped by now seriously aggravated supporters) manages to get the National Rally over the finish line in the next elections.

There's rumours of another parliament dissolution this summer, if this happens I guess we'll see more clearly where the chips may fall.

As if war and rumours of wars were not concern enough. European politics are detrimental to mental health.
posted by dragondollar at 6:08 AM on April 1 [21 favorites]

Cue butthurt from fascists who are all about the law and order until it comes knocking.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 6:19 AM on April 1 [4 favorites]

Now that she's out of the picture, the risk is that instead of simply buttressing the not-so-great but acceptable centrist majority, a more competent figure (helped by now seriously aggravated supporters) manages to get the National Rally over the finish line in the next elections.

dragondollar, short of applying the laws of the land (as has happened) what other action could have been taken, toward a better outcome? It's really starting to seem like all actions lead to bad outcomes, iow: despair
posted by ginger.beef at 7:56 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]

This is an echo of what is going on in Romania, as Presidential election front-runner Călin Georgescu was barred from the upcoming re-vote, to much right wing consternation. I have a lot of thoughts on this, but will circle back to Le Pen, I swear.

The results of the first round of runoffs for the Romanian presidential election were invalidated after Georgescu, who had been polling in the low single digits, came in first due to what appeared to be an organized social media tampering campaign, almost certainly with Russian backing. After an investigation, Georgescu was barred from the re-vote as well, eliciting angry words from JD Vance, Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk, etc.

As with Le Pen, there was extensive right-wing hand-wringing about "denial of democracy." All of this, even though Georgescu demonstrably violated multiple election laws. These included: not labelling political content on social media, which is a disqualifiable offense in and of itself in Romania; campaign funding fraud, also disqualifiable (he declared a €0 campaign budget despite accepting extensive gifts and services from donors, including Russian-associated fixers and mercenaries); and association with banned hate groups. The last one is interesting because Romania has laws stipulating that if a candidate holds explicitly racist beliefs they are inherently unsuited to represent the entire electorate and thus are ineligible to run for office. Finally, Georgescu's associates attempted to stage violent unrest in the wake of the nullification of the first round of voting, and it turns out in some countries, they consider that bad and not how potential elected leaders should behave.

None of the preceding reasons for disqualifying Georgescu were new laws. In fact, fellow right-wing candidate Diana Șoșoacă had been banned from the initial vote for associations with hate groups. Some of the corruption/campaign regulation violations cited are not consistently applied though, and might reasonably have impeded candidates from other parties, at least in prior elections. Georgescu's actions were at the least, different in terms of degree, as his flouting of election laws was particularly flagrant.

Interestingly, although the the Romanian government also found what they considered to convincing evidence that Georgescu's rise was fueled by a coordinated Russian-backed TikTok manipulation campaign, this was not one of the formal reasons given for his disqualification. The election bureau felt there were sufficient clearly provable causes to ban him that there was no reason to publicly litigate this much more complex charge.

Much of the Romanian population is incensed that Georgescu is off the ballot. There is widespread sentiment that the two most prominent political parties in the country PSD and PNL are more interested in preserving their power than electoral integrity. The problem is, despite the misguided faith these voters are putting in Georgescu, their assessment of the PSD and PNL is not entirely unfair. Romania frequently makes the lists of "Europe's most corrupt countries" and these parties have been the hands at the wheel bringing this assessment on.

(Side note: PSD stands for the Democratic Socialists Party, which may sound great to progressive ears from further West, but might be better understood as the party where semi-legitimized Communist Party apparatchiks ended up, rather than anything akin to say Bernie Sanders or our Scandinavian friends. They're center-left cogs of the system, not agents of change. PNL is the National Liberal Party, but that's liberal in the conservative global economic sense, not the US political spectrum sense. They're center-right.)

Currently, the candidate leading in the polls for the revised first round of runoffs is George Simion, the leader of AUR. AUR are right-wing dirtbags, but a half-step less extreme than Georgescu. Think "Tea Party" extremist, rather than MAGA extremist.

None of the left/center's generally uninspiring candidates have the same momentum currently, but with the runoff system, there is a lot of uncertainty. No one really knows whether the non right-wing voters will coalesce behind whichever center-left voices comes out ahead or whether Simion will build momentum from a first place showing, pick up undecideds and angry Georgescu voters and pull out in front.

The end result is very much like in France where a candidate has been barred from elections based on illegal things they definitely did, but which are not always punished in this fashion. The center-left sees this as a defense mechanism against right-wing extremists who want to dismantle to current Democratic frameworks (which they do and it is), and the right sees it as denying the people the right to decide at the ballot box.

The risk you run is that that the latter, not entirely off-based accusation may galvanize the right and help accelerate the rise of the far-right rather than slow it down.

I'm 100% in favor of banning both Le Pen and Georgescu and honestly, I only wish we would have enforced the law to prohibit TFG in the US in a similar fashion.

In the face of a fascist flood, I will take an imperfect wall of sandbags.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:06 AM on April 1 [12 favorites]

@ginger.beef : Yeah French politics are particularly depressing at the moment. I'm not sure if legally it would have been an option, but seeing it was her party that benefitted from the scheme, I think letting her off the hook but levying a very heavy fine, to the tune of several millions euros, against her party may have been a better outcome. It's not like they can borrow more money from Russian banks now that they have been unplugged from SWIFT. That way she would have remained her usual own-goal-scoring-candidate-self, the lack of funds would be a more abstract problem less likely to galvanise her base while hindering her campaign at the same time.
posted by dragondollar at 8:09 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]

I think letting her off the hook but levying a very heavy fine, to the tune of several millions euros, against her party may have been a better outcome.
...and 5 minutes after the ruling , Elon Musk would send her twice this sum, and brag on Twitter how he had just saved France from wokeness, DEI, trans people, etc. No need for Russian money these days.
posted by elgilito at 8:27 AM on April 1 [9 favorites]

@elgilito : I hadn't thought about that, but I guess you're right, the guy donated heavily to the AfD after all. That doesn't completely invalidate my point though, because Musk can still inject money in French politics and it could turbocharge a Jordan Bardella campaign surfing on enraged supporters. It's a bit different from the US situation where removing TFG from the ballot could have resulted into a Kamala Harris vs a "normal" GOP candidate, say Nikki Haley, election. Here, we just get the heir apparent instead of the head honcho, and he may actually be a stronger candidate...
posted by dragondollar at 9:06 AM on April 1

Democracy is one of the things that the criminal justice system is supposed to protect, because it's supposed to police the rich and powerful as well as those without money and influence, which in turn should keep the corrupt and the violent from seeking or keeping political office. If the U.S. had a decent criminal justice system, TFG would have landed behind bars by the time he was thirty. It's heartening to see Marine Le Pen face consequences for her crimes. Will there be another right wing leader stepping forward who is just as bad or worse? Very possibly, but that's no reason for inaction on Le Pen.
posted by orange swan at 10:00 AM on April 1 [4 favorites]

A political leader guilty of actual crimes must be brought to justice in an appropriate way. The threat of far right violence is not a reason to defer that, but a reason to press ahead with it. Intimidation cannot lead to surrender. Make them the ones causing death and destruction.
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:00 AM on April 1 [3 favorites]

In the spirit of April the first, I'll observe that, just as we allow convicted murderers to roam the streets pending an appeal that could take years on the chance that they won't kill anyone, it's entirely reasonable to allow convicted embezzlers to run for public office while appealing their sentence on the chance that they won't embezzle public funds. Though I expect I'll change my mind after noon.

Given that a lot of people took the neighbouring April Fool's joke thread at face value, I'd better confirm that I don't consider it reasonable to allow a convicted criminal to run for office whether they're appealing their sentence or not, and am not aware of any convicted murderers who have been set loose while they're appealing their sentences. Also that I disagree with the positions of Varoufakis, Putin, Musk, Hannan... and Le Pen.
posted by rory at 10:06 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]

"Turns out Le Pen is not mightier than the fraud."

Found on the socials.
posted by doctornemo at 10:32 AM on April 1 [5 favorites]

Can they look at Farage now, please?
posted by scruss at 10:49 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]

Who in their right mind would want to look at Farage? Turns my stomach just to glimpse him.
posted by Grangousier at 11:04 AM on April 1 [2 favorites]

Can they look at Farage now, please?

yeah, one of the reasons I mentioned Messerschmidt above is that they probably all did this. They don't respect the EU, so why shouldn't they use the money for themselves?
posted by mumimor at 11:14 AM on April 1 [1 favorite]

They do all do this. Ryszard Czarnecki was caught by OLAF for filing false expense claims as freaking vice president of the EU parliament - he took budget flights from Warsaw to Brussels every week and instead claimed mileage on car trips to a fictional address in southeast Poland to extend the route by an extra 350 km each time. Hilariously, he made up 17 random car registrations - probably to make it more difficult to check odometers since the trips totalled 200,000 km - and one of them belonged to a farmer's tractor while another had been junked and formally deregistered a decade before supposedly being driven to Brussels and back.

He's returned half the 200k euro so far, charges were filed in December and court date pending. He faces up to 15 years in jail and if convicted will be permanently inellible for office.

Fingers crossed this route is used for more fascist grifters.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 12:57 PM on April 1 [6 favorites]

It's almost mind-boggling, given how many countries are facing down the possibility of an anti-democratic fascist winning an election, how there is this resistance to and pearl-clutching about the idea of convicting these candidates of crimes they definitely committed which make them ineligible to run. I mean, goddam.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:51 PM on April 1 [6 favorites]

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