Court allows far-right leader Marine Le Pen to run for president
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
>However it ruled she must wear an electronic ankle tag for a year, making a campaign both logistically and politically difficult.
>Le Pen herself appeared to rule out a run if she was forced to wear a tag. “If I’m allowed to be a candidate but am effectively prevented from campaigning freely, then you understand that wouldn’t be possible,” she said in an interview last week.
>...
>Le Pen is due to give a prime-time TV interview on TF1 at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. ET), in which she may make an announcement on her political future.
France is perhaps a _little_ unusual in that it regularly criminally punishes criminal politicians (not restricted to the far right; former president Sarkozy spent a few weeks in prison and also got an electronic tag for corruption). Some countries, notably the US, are extremely unwilling to do this (at least at a federal level; the US has occasionally jailed naughty state governors, I think). Up to you whether you consider this a _good_ practice.
It's not a witch hunt, she just sucks at doing the same thing that everyone else does. It's fairly standard to go hard in the EU elections in order to buff up your party's treasury, but RN/FN was just comical in how openly they did it.
Francois Bayrou/MoDem had the exact same scheme but because he is much smarter than Le Pen so he never left behind a smoking gun whereas she openly said what she was doing in front of multiple people (and RN/FN had a huge loyalty problem at the time).