‘Millions Of French People That Have Been Silenced’: Marine Le Pen Reacts To Ban On Her Running

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French leader Marine Le Pen, head of the right-wing National Rally Party, who was banned from running for president by a French court, recently reacted to the ruling in an interview with TF1.

The decision from the court accused Le Pen and others in her party of using $4.9 million of European Parliament funds designed to aid legislators in the European Parliament to pay party staffers uninvolved in work for the parliament.

“I perfectly understood that the court president was explaining that she was issuing a political ruling,” Le Pen stated. “The magistrate made it very clear that enforcing the temporary sentence barring me from seeking public office, rendered my appeal void and would prevent me from running and getting elected, she said, in the presidential election.”

“There are millions of French people who are outraged, outraged to an unbelievable extent when they see that, in France, the country of human rights, judges were implementing practices that we thought were typical of authoritarian regimes,” she continued.

“I think the judges got it wrong,” she said. “I think they chose to ignore all of the explanations that were given because, in the very first hours of this trial, I had understood that the court was biased against us. I did not think the magistrates would go this far against our democratic process and interfere this much with the choice of the French. Let’s be clear: I have been silenced but it’s the voice of millions of French people that have been silenced as we speak tonight.”

“I’m a fighter,” she declared. “I’m not going to let myself be eliminated like that. I’m going to pursue every avenue of recourse that I can. There’s a small path; it may be narrow, but it does exist. In fact, I’m going to ask, in the clearest possible way for the appeal decision to be handed down enabling me to consider running in the presidential election. I will always stand by the French. Millions of French people believe in me. Millions of French people put their trust in me. And I’ve come to tell them, ‘I have been fighting for you for 30 years and I’ve been fighting injustice for thirty years. And so I’m going to keep doing it. And I will do it all the way.’”