Le Pen was so pissed she stormed out of the courtroom before hearing the sentence! 

Almost two months after her infamous father died – to much fanfare – the political future of French neo-fascist leader Marine Le Pen seems just as dead after a French court found her guilty of embezzlement charges and barred her from running for office for five years. Now instead of campaigning to serve as the next President of France, she is facing a four-year prison sentence with two years suspended and two to be served under house arrest, plus a €100,000 ($108,000 USD) fine.

According to CNN, Le Pen, her political party the National Rally (RN, formerly the National Front), and more than 20 of its members were convicted of using European Parliament money to pay staff who were in fact working for RN in France. Nine members of the European Parliament, including Le Pen, and 12 assistants were found guilty.

CNN further noted that the court ruled that Le Pen had used four party employees as parliamentary assistants, including her personal assistant and her bodyguard, misusing European Union funds for her own political party.

The court additionally ruled that over 11-plus years Le Pen and her colleagues embezzled more than €4 million ($4.3 million USD). The RN was ordered to pay €2 million ($2.1 million USD) in fines.

While Le Pen’s lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut said they will file an appeal of the conviction, she will still be barred from running for the presidency in 2027. She was considered the frontrunner in that race to succeed President Emmanuel Macron at the end of his second and final term. On Twitter, Jordan Bardella, her 29-year-old protégé who could replace her on the ballot, said she, “is being unjustly condemned,” and that French democracy, “is being executed,” an ironic statement from a leader of a political party that has often been called out for threatening democracy.

However, Juergen Hardt, a senior lawmaker with Germany’s Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz, said that the courts got it right. “As a Member of the European Parliament, Marine Le Pen saw the European Union only as a self-service store with which she could finance herself and her party,” he said. “The French court is right to put a stop to her political ambitions. Le Pen’s fate should be a warning to all corrupt politicians on the left and right fringes: in a democratic nation of law, fraud and corruption always come to light at some point.”

Le Pen stormed out of the courtroom before hearing the sentence when the judge first indicated that she would be barred from seeking office.