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 collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
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