Sarkozy Escapes Prison, Le Pen Forced Out, and Pétainist Revisionism
From Nicolas Sarkozy’s unexpected release pending appeal, to Marine Le Pen’s enforced resignation and a Pétainist tribute in Verdun, France faces a pivotal test of judicial independence and truth.
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This week
👮Sarkozy out of prison
❌Le Pen’s appeal rejected by Council of State
💬Prefect denounces revisionist tribute to Pétain in Verdun
👮Sarkozy out of prison
So, let’s start the week off strong:
On Monday 10 November 2025, following his historic conviction and imprisonment over the Libyan financing case, where former Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi funded Nicolas Sarkozy’s successful 2007 presidential election campaign to the tune of around €50 million, Nicolas Sarkozy has now been let out of jail.
But Julien, I hear you all ask: why is he being released from jail? He was found guilty of:
Corruption & influence-peddling - Bismuth case;
Illegal campaign funding in 2012 - the Bygmalion affair, and most recently, to drop him in prison:
Criminal association, corruption, and criminal conspiracy - the Libyan financing case.
How is this possible? He had a five-year prison sentence?
Well, you see, my dear reader, Nicolas Sarkozy’s lawyers have secured an escape from the provision execution of his prison sentence, which means that Sarkozy will be allowed to stay outside of the Santé prison until his appeal against the court decision in his case is completed.
However, this doesn’t mean he’s necessarily a free man. As part of this decision, Nicolas Sarkozy is under judicial control, is banned from leaving France, and is forbidden from coming into contact with Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, his office, or any defendants in the court case.
Upon his release, he posted this message to his supporters on Twitter:
“Now that I have regained my freedom and my family, I want to tell all those who wrote to me, supported me and defended me how grateful I am to them. Your thousands of messages moved me deeply and gave me the strength to endure this ordeal.
Justice has been done. I will now prepare for the appeal. My energy is focused solely on proving my innocence. The truth will prevail. That is something life teaches us.
The end of the story remains to be written.”
Now, putting aside the fact that Sarkozy and some of his co-defendants have been released, there’s a broader question here about whether or not Sarkozy has received preferential treatment, and the role that Gérald Darmanin has played in this.
At the end of October, Justice Minister Darmanin, whose role requires obligatory judicial independence, visited Sarkozy at the end of October, and immediately received criticism from magistrates, such as Rémy Heitz, who argued that this “risked undermining impartiality” and therefore “undermining the independence of judges” ahead of Sarkozy’s appeal trial.
Regardless of whether he did anything or not, Darmanin’s visit could easily be used to undermine the rule of law, as in Marine Le Pen’s case, which involved criminal embezzlement, leading to a five-year ban from political life.
With an appeal trial planned to take place from 13 January to 12 February, and the result of this planned for before the summer, Sarkozy’s release provides several arguments against the provisional application of Le Pen or her RN colleagues’ provisional executions of their punishments, and is leading to a lot of activists using this to claim double standards.
Which is usually the reason why you need to strictly protect judicial independence beyond a shadow of a doubt, especially when…
❌Le Pen’s compulsory resignation confirmed by Council of State
A strong development has hit Marine Le Pen this week, which have her supporters in France, Russia, the United States, and India up in arms, as her political life continues to be impacted by her involvement in the alleged embezzlement of millions of euros.
This Monday 10 November 2025, the Council of State confirmed that Marine Le Pen must resign from her position as departmental councillor of Pas-de-Calais, one of the 95 decentralised bodies that work on ensuring the health and well-being of French departments.
The embattled leader of the National Rally (RN) argued, in her appeal against a prefectural order of resignation, that the legislative provisions that had led to her automatic resignation “did not respect the principle of equality before the law because of the difference in treatment between departmental councillors and members of parliament, whose mandates are only revoked in the event of a final conviction resulting in ineligibility.”
However, the Council of State countered that electoral law was applied “as consistently interpreted by the case law of the Council of State, according to which a local elected representative sentenced to ineligibility with provisional enforcement must be automatically dismissed by the prefect”
💬Prefect denounces revisionist tribute to Pétain in Verdun
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So, sticking with the far-right for a second: this Saturday 15 November 2025, a tribute was paid to the former Marshal, Nazi collaborator, and great traitor of the French Republic, Philippe Pétain, within a church in Verdun.
According to the report by Le Monde, the prefect of the Meuse, Xavier Delarue, was made aware of “clearly revisionist” remarks that were made by “a very small number of people” during the tribute paid to “Marshall Pétain and his soldiers.”
To compound the matter, prior to the mass, Prefect Delarue had apparently spoken to the priest and made a point of discussing the need to ensure that the 1905 law of separation of Church and State was respected, and that no speeches or distribution of leaflets of a political nature would take place.
Which clearly didn’t work, as shown by the president of the Association to Defend the Memory of Marshal Pétain (ADMP), Jacques Boncompain, who told journalists that the French head of state had been “the first resistance fighter in France.”
Which, coming from a family of resistance fighters, is outright offensive.
Now, while this is a relatively isolated situation, the reality is that historical revisionism has been a long-term problem in France, and is increasingly problematic in a world where far-right activists try to whitewash the history of Nazism and the far-left try to whitewash the history of Communism.
In this case, the nationalist, Pétainist, and identitarian ‘Parti de la France’ may have claimed to simply be honouring the spirit of Pétain, but what they were doing is far more insidious.
They were actively attacking the history of our country and the judicial decision that punished Pétain for not only betraying the French Republic, but also actively collaborating to send jews and other so-called “undesirables” to their deaths for nothing other than his own benefit.
This is an unforgivable act that compounds another unforgivable act, and should be aggressively addressed through Xavier Delarue’s legal complaint regarding this matter.
Because ultimately, if we allow this kind of revisionism to take root, if we allow our collective memory to fade, and if we allow a collapse of historical, political, and, dare I say, moral education, then we’ll find ourselves falling to the same societal failures as the Americans and the British.
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Big mistake re Sarkozy