Marine Le Pen has ended her silence to publicly renew her backing for Jordan Bardella, who faces mounting scrutiny following fresh revelations of alleged antisemitic and conspiracist messages.
Three days after the investigative outlet Mediapart published a second report on the controversy, the presidential contender told La Tribune Dimanche she retains “total confidence” in Bardella, who is widely seen as her likely prime minister should she win the 2027 election.
Le Pen had already rushed to Bardella’s defense when Mediapart first aired the allegations on Monday. “You won’t get anyone to believe that,” she told reporters during a trade fair visit, abruptly ending the exchange. “It’s not that it’s not an issue… it’s just madness,” she added.
What are the allegations?
Mediapart, stating it preserved the original grammatical and spelling errors, reports that a 17- or 18-year-old Bardella railed in one exchange against the supposed desire of “the Jew” to “dominate” other peoples, to “crush” and “rob” them, adding that “a Zionist is necessarily Jewish, deep down.”
He is also alleged to have accused several ministers from François Hollande’s administration of prioritizing Israeli and banking interests over those of France.
The report also underscores the alleged influence of Alain Soral on Bardella’s political formation. Soral is a far-right ideologue who has been repeatedly convicted of inciting racial hatred, antisemitic insults, homophobia, and Holocaust denial.
Bardella has dismissed the messages as “crude fakes,” describing their publication as “the beginnings of a total war” aimed at derailing the National Rally’s presidential campaign. He has filed two legal complaints, for defamation and for forgery and use of forgeries.
Mediapart frames its second article as a response to what it terms a “violent challenge” to its journalism. The outlet accuses Bardella of having “lied to the whole of France” by denying authorship of the texts.
The outlet published screenshots purportedly supplied by sources close to Bardella, and stated that Meta had authenticated the messages—dated 2013—via a Facebook archive extraction.
A row with no impact on voting intentions
According to an investigation by Le Parisien, Marine Le Pen “is not necessarily convinced of her protégé’s good faith.”
The newspaper reports interviewing a member of the RN candidate’s campaign team, who said Le Pen believes “it is quite likely that the exchanges are real. They are the words of a 17-year-old kid intoxicated by Soral, who is no longer the same person today.”
That account stands in stark contrast to Le Pen’s brief public statement in La Tribune Dimanche.
The weekly also notes that, according to a campaign source, “these controversies do not in any way dent the 30% to 35% of voting intentions in favor of Marine Le Pen.” “If our electorate paid attention to what the press says about us, we’d be at 2%,” she dismisses.
The allegations come as opinion polls credit Le Pen with 31% to 36% of first-round voting intentions for the presidential election, placing her ahead of former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who are competing for second place.
According to several media reports, Le Pen and Bardella are scheduled to hold a joint press conference on Tuesday to present the National Rally’s alternative budget, just days after the government unveiled its own fiscal plans.
Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD), citing an RN MP, questions whether the controversy might deter the party from moving to censure the government should it force its budget bill through using Article 49.3—a constitutional provision allowing a text to pass without a vote unless a censure motion garners a majority. An expert interviewed by Euronews deemed resort to this tool likely.
“Even if we consider that Jordan is innocent of the acts of which he is accused, the controversy exists, whether we like it or not. Perhaps we should avoid adding further disorder to the bad press,” the JDD writes.