A French judge has revealed how American representatives pressured her. According to experts, this episode shows the extent to which France is being targeted by Trump’s MAGA movement.
The heart of the US administration of President Donald Trump beats for the far right of the European political spectrum. The US National Security Strategy of December 2025 makes it official: it speaks of a “civilizational extinction” of Europe due to migration. However, the “growing influence of European patriotic parties” is a reason for great optimism, the strategy says. Therefore, “Europe must be helped to correct its current course”. American politicians repeat these messages regularly, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio did recently at the Munich Security Conference. But the Trump administration is also active behind the scenes.
French judge Magali Lafourcade has been convinced of this since April 28, 2025, when she first sounded the alarm about foreign interference during her career at the French Foreign Ministry. This episode, which Lafourcade recently made public, shows the extent to which France is being targeted by the US, according to experts.
At the time, Lafourcade, in her capacity as secretary general of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, received Samuel D. Samson and Christopher Anderson from the US State Department. The two were on a visit to Europe, during which, according to media reports, they also met members of the French far-right party Rassemblement National (RN). “It quickly became clear that they were seeking information about the case against Marine Le Pen,” the judge explained to DW. The RN presidential candidate had just been disqualified from running for five years, among other things for alleged misuse of EU funds. This would prevent Le Pen from running in the 2027 presidential election. An appeals court will announce in July whether it will uphold the ruling.
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“According to American diplomats, the conviction was politically motivated, as Le Pen was against President Emmanuel Macron,” Lafourcade recalls. “I told them that she had been found guilty of corruption after a detailed ten-year investigation and that penalties such as disqualification from running for office were not uncommon. But they insisted, as if they were looking for proof that it had not been a fair trial. Then Samson said that Europe must respect freedom of expression. I replied that in our country freedom of expression prevailed, except in cases of insults, defamation, hate speech, discrimination and Holocaust denial,” Lafourcade explains.
“They said, ‘We are your allies, but for that to happen, Europe must allow the forbidden statements again.’” “MAGA uses the language of human rights to undermine them,” says Lafourcade, referring to Trump’s MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) movement. President Trump has occasionally been the subject of criticism for his crackdown on dissent. For example, he has denied journalists access to the White House and sued media organizations.
Nicolas Conquer, a member of Republicans Overseas and founder of the Paris-based MAGA-affiliated think tank The Western Arc, calls it “slander” to say that this meeting was an attempt at foreign interference. “This is slander. It is perfectly legitimate to have reservations about the trial. We are observers of events and we defend issues that are in the interest of the United States of America and Europe,” he told DW in an interview.
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However, the French Foreign Ministry makes it clear that it is no longer only registering interference from Russia. “We respond to anyone who attacks us, whether from the east or the west,” ministry spokesman Pascal Confavreux tells DW, without specifying which of the two threats is the greater. But the timing of Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot’s announcement of a new strategy against foreign interference speaks for itself: he did so on January 29, 2025, a week after Trump took office.
The ministry aims to identify and respond to foreign interference attempts, including through the X platform account “French Response,” which ironically responds to disinformation. “We cannot win the information war without entering the battle,” says Confavreux. Most recently, the Foreign Ministry summoned the US ambassador to the ministry after he commented on the death of a far-right radical in Marseille. At first, he kept the ministry waiting in vain, but then promised “not to interfere in the public debate.”
For David Colon, a history professor at Sciences Po University in Paris and an expert on information manipulation, France has the best information warfare defense system in Europe. “President Macron was already aware of the risk of foreign interference during his 2017 presidential campaign: as part of the so-called ‘Macron Leaks’, someone published thousands of emails from his team,” Colon explains to DW. Europe is now in a delicate position. “In the United States, conspiracy theorists are in power,” the researcher says. “They have the same goals and strategies as the Russians: they want to weaken the EU and see the US withdraw from NATO.”
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Tara Varma, executive director of Strategic Foresight at the German Marshall Fund think tank in Paris, even speaks of an “obsession.” “MAGA supporters claim to ‘love’ Europe, but this love is toxic,” Varma, who until recently lived in Washington, tells DW. “They want to subjugate Europe, deny climate change, and are against minority rights.” Maya Kandel, a visiting scholar and expert on US foreign policy at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris, is also convinced that the United States is waging a cultural war against Europe and, above all, against France.
“They hold regular meetings with members of the French right and far-right,” she tells DW. “The MAGA movement exports its ideas through international conferences, the so-called CPACs and Natcones, and the US government plans to fund like-minded organizations in other countries.” For experts, it is clear why France is targeted. “We play a central role in the EU, we have nuclear weapons and we are permanent members of the UN Security Council. And it doesn’t take much for the situation to change,” says Judge Lafourcade. RN leads the polls for the 2027 presidential election. (DW)