PARIS, April 1, (AP): A French court on Monday convicted Marine Le Pen of embezzlement and barred her from seeking public office for five years - a hammer blow to the far-right leader’s presidential hopes and an earthquake for French politics. Le Pen denounced the verdict in an interview with French TV channel TF1 as a "political” move aimed at preventing her from running in the 2027 presidential election and said that millions of French people "are outraged.”

She described the ruling as a violation of the rule of law, said she would appeal and asked that the court proceedings take place before the 2027 campaign. She would remain ineligible to be a candidate until the appeal is decided. Le Pen also was given four years’ imprisonment, with two to be served under house arrest and two suspended - which would not apply pending appeal.

The court ruling was a political as well as a judicial temblor for France, hobbling one of the leading contenders to succeed President Emmanuel Macron at the end of his second and final term. So broad were the political implications that even some of Le Pen's opponents said the Paris court had gone too far. But it’s too early to say how the case will affect voters.

The potential elimination of Le Pen could fire up diehard supporters, just as US President’s Donald Trump’s legal problems motivated some of his. But it could also leave her on the sidelines, deflating what had been her upward trajectory. Le Pen said the court should not have made her ineligible to run for office until all her chances at appeal had been exhausted, and that by doing so it was clear the court was aiming "specifically to prevent” her from being elected president. "If that’s not a political decision, I don’t know what is,” Le Pen said in the TF1 interview.

She said the ruling marked a "fateful day for our democracy” but vowed to keep pursuing what she called the now "admittedly narrow” path to the presidency. "There are millions of French people who believe in me, millions of French people who trust me,” she added: "For 30 years I’ve been fighting for you, and for 30 years I’ve been fighting against injustice, so I’m going to continue fighting.” Le Pen herself was not around to hear the chief judge pronounce the sentence that threw her career into a tailspin. By then, the 56-year-old politician had already strode out of the courtroom.