JERUSALEM — Elon Musk, head of Government Efficiency under President Donald Trump, criticized the court ruling against Marine Le Pen for embezzlement on Monday, comparing it to the legal issues faced by Trump. The verdict sparked outrage.

Following the verdict, Musk stated that the legal actions against Le Pen would “backfire, like the legal attacks against President Trump.” He attributed Le Pen’s conviction to the left, saying, “When the radical left can’t win via democratic vote, they abuse the legal system to jail their opponents. This is their standard playbook throughout the world.”

Le Pen’s conviction, which prevents her from holding office for five years, occurs amidst legal proceedings against other right-wing politicians, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Romania’s Călin Georgescu.

Last year, Digital reported that legal experts saw parallels between Trump’s conviction in Manhattan for falsifying business records and the ongoing corruption prosecution against Netanyahu.

When questioned about Le Pen’s sentence on Monday, Trump described it as “a big deal,” and added, “But she was banned for running for five years, and she’s the leading candidate. That sounds like this country, that sounds very much like this country.”

Other instances of legal targeting of right-wing world leaders and politicians include Netanyahu, who faces charges of fraud, breach of trust, and bribery in a case that began four years ago and is still ongoing. Netanyahu has consistently denied all accusations.

Romania’s right-wing presidential hopeful, Georgescu, was disqualified from the race due to criminal charges he likened to those faced by Trump.

“We are faced with a communist regime as well,” Georgescu told Digital just before a Romanian electoral bureau barred him from running in a May presidential election rerun. Prosecutors had initiated a criminal case against him two weeks prior.

Just last week, Brazil’s Supreme Court accepted charges against former President Bolsonaro regarding an alleged attempt to remain in office after his 2022 election loss, ordering him to stand trial.

Italy’s , who was acquitted in December of illegally detaining migrants, described his case as “a declaration of war by Brussels.”

Eugene Kontorovich, a legal expert and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, told Digital that “France follows the pattern of political prosecutions in the U.S. and Israel, where criminal prosecutions for obscure victimless offenses are used to knock out popular leaders of right wing parties, and use to courts to stand between the electorate and their preferred candidates. It is unlikely these cases are all happening within a year of each other: Leftists around the world are learning from, and legitimizing, each other’s tactics.”

The core of the embezzlement case involves allegations that Le Pen and over 20 other National Rally members misused EU funds to employ staff for National Rally work instead of for European Parliament-related activities in Brussels, as required by EU regulations.

The French court also sentenced Le Pen to a four-year prison term. The conviction has created a political crisis in France, with the next presidential election scheduled for 2027.

Right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán posted a solidarity message in French on social media, “Je suis Marine!” (“I am Marine”), which seems to be a reference to the slogan “Je suis Charlie” that was created after radical Islamist terrorists murdered journalists in 2015 from the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris.

Le Pen has transformed the anti-immigration National Rally party (formerly known as the National Front) into a significant political force that could potentially win the 2027 presidential election.

She removed her father, the , who founded the National Front, and disavowed his antisemitism. He was fined for calling the Holocaust gas chambers a “detail of history.”

Marine Le Pen’s protégé, 29-year-old Jordan Bardella, recently spoke at an Israeli government conference on combating antisemitism. He is expected to succeed her as leader of the National Rally and urged a “peaceful mobilization” to protest the verdict.

According to French24, Bardella stated that the guilty verdict has “killed” French democracy. His party has launched a petition stating: “It is no longer the government of judges, but the dictatorship of judges, which wishes to prevent the French people from expressing themselves.”

Le Pen’s lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut, has announced that he will appeal the verdict.

“I am shocked by the incredibly tough verdict against Marine Le Pen,” said Holland’s right-wing politician, Geert Wilders, who has been called the Dutch version of Trump.

He added, “I support and believe in her 100% and I trust she will win the appeal and become President of France.”

Digital’s Morgan Phillips, Reuters and