US Vice President J.D. Vance on Thursday said that French Member of Parliament Marine Le Pen was convicted of a very minor offense and barring her from running for office was “not democracy.”
“They’re trying to throw her in prison and throw her off the ballot,” Vance said in an interview with the Newsmax television channel. “Look, that’s not democracy.”
He said that Le Pen had been “leading in some polls” for France’s 2027 presidential election and had been convicted of an “incredibly minor charge that implicates, by the way, her staff, not even Marine le Pen herself.”
Photo: AP
Le Pen, considered a leading candidate in the 2027 election, was found guilty by a French court on Monday of embezzlement of European Parliament expenses and banned from running from public office for five years.
US President Donald Trump weighed in on the sentence late on Thursday, calling it a “Witch Hunt” by “European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent.”
“I don’t know Marine Le Pen, but do appreciate how hard she worked for so many years,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “She suffered losses, but kept on going, and now, just before what would be a Big Victory, they get her on a minor charge that she probably knew nothing about - Sounds like a ‘bookkeeping’ error to me.”
Photo: Reuters
“It is all so bad for France, and the Great French People, no matter what side they are on. FREE MARINE LE PEN!” he added.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
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