donderdag 22 januari 2026

US officials tried to lobby against Marine Le Pen election ban, French judge says




 Marine Le Pen

US officials tried to lobby against Marine Le Pen election ban, French judge says

Magali Lafourcade says the two envoys were convinced the far-right leader’s corruption trial had been political
A French magistrate has said two Trump administration emissaries approached her seeking to lobby against an election ban on the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Magali Lafourcade, the secretary general of France’s human rights commission (CNCDH), an independent body that advises the government, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) she had reported the content of the meeting to the French foreign ministry immediately, fearing a potential “manipulation of the public debate in France”.
Confirming comments she made to France 5 TV, Lafourcade said she had been very surprised by the tenor of her discussion with the US advisers in Paris last May, when they steered the conversation on to French judges’ sentencing of Le Pen in 2025 after she was found guilty of the embezzlement of European parliament funds.
After a nine-week trial in Paris, judges ruled last March that Le Pen had been at the heart of an extensive and long-running fake jobs scam at the European parliament, and banned her from running for public office for five years with immediate effect.
Le Pen, 57, who leads the anti-immigration National Rally (RN), had been considered a lead contender for next year’s presidential election until her sentence. She also received a four-year prison term, with two years suspended and two to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet. She was ordered to pay a €100,000 (£87,000) fine.
Le Pen appealed alongside 10 of the 24 party members who were convicted last year. She denied wrongdoing and is appearing in court in Paris on a fresh trial as she seeks to overturn her conviction and sentence. She told the court on Wednesday that she had always acted in good faith.
Lafourcade told AFP she had met Samuel D Samson and Christopher J Anderson last May. They are advisers for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), which is part of the Department of State. She said they had been seeking “elements to support a theory that could have, perhaps, served to support a disinformation or manipulation of the public debate in France”.
Lafourcade said she had tried to explain the French judicial process, but that the two men “were convinced it was a political trial that aimed to remove [Le Pen] from the presidential race or to place a ban on her for purely political reasons”.
She said they felt Le Pen had been unfairly treated and was victim of a “political conviction”, and that they had sought elements to support that view.
Lafourcade, who is not involved in the Le Pen case, said she was troubled because this was not the type of conversation that “should happen with allies”.
She said she had sensed that it could be seen as a form of interference, so immediately reported the conversation to the foreign ministry, “which is something I never do, as we are an independent institution and don’t report the exchanges we have with diplomats”.
She said the foreign ministry, which has not commented, had told her it would take her report very seriously.
The state department did not respond to questions identifying Samson and Anderson as the US officials who met with Lafourcade.
In a statement, it said the “trip in question occurred nearly eight months ago and we discussed these false rumors publicly at the time. This is old news.”
“[DRL] officials routinely hold productive meetings across Europe with a wide range of government officials and civil society representatives to address concerns regarding censorship, democratic backsliding and other human rights issues,” the statement added.
Samson, a recent college graduate appointed as senior adviser under the new Trump administration, had recommended last year that his bureau’s leadership use funds earmarked by Congress for foreign assistance to support projects including the resettlement of Afrikaners to the US and Le Pen’s legal defence. It is not clear whether the DRL’s leadership adopted his recommendations.
Samson, one of a number of young conservatives to rise under the Trump administration, reflects the White House’s changing priorities for foreign assistance. He wrote a controversial post on the Department of State’s Substack page titled The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe, in which he also criticised the labelling of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland as an extremist organisation, saying this “environment also restricts Europe’s elections”.
Le Pen’s sentence prompted anger among political figures on the international populist right. Trump called it a “witch-hunt” by “European leftists”.
Le Pen had attacked what she called a “tyranny of judges” who she said wanted to stop her running in a presidential race she said she could otherwise win.
She told La Tribune Dimanche this month that whatever the outcome, her party would dominate and its “ideas will survive”. If she is unable to run for the presidency for a fourth time next year, she will be replaced by her young protege and party president, Jordan Bardella.
The German magazine Der Spiegel has reported that Trump officials held internal discussions about sanctioning French prosecutors and judges involved in last year’s trial and sentencing of Le Pen. The Department of State said it was a “fake story”.
The president of the Paris judicial court, Peimane Ghaleh-Marzban, said this month that any move against a French judge would “constitute an unacceptable and intolerable interference in the internal affairs of our country”.
The French government spokesperson, Maud Bregeon, said this month that there was no proof of any international interference, but that the government would remain vigilant.
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My Comments :

Europe - bit by bit - is slowly but certainly drawn into the right-extremist orbit of the highly racist and fascist and hyper theocratic projects 2025 and Esther of the USA Heritage Foundation.

So not only is Europe under serious threat of far-reaching geo-political intruding in its internal affairs (the USA recently announced their Greenland annexation, and brutely annexed Venezuela), but also its freedom of political determination and independent judicial framework, has been subject to farreaching foreign interference.

Remember in the very same context, the constant mentioning by USA (and Europe) of the "Russian meddling" with our internal politics, in this light does appear unreservedly  hypocritical at the least.

And so is by the way the very fact, that both Europe and the USA have been protesting against the very violent Russian attack and wholesale landgrab on the country of Ukraine, while the much more serious activities of the zionist settler colony on Palestine territory (Umvolkung and genocide) have been eagerly assisted (in numerous ways) both by the USA and Europe.

The world politically-speaking, is rapidly moving towards the totalitarian abyss, and in the process environmentally further moving away from saving our precious habitat than ever before.

So far, so bad !
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dinsdag 20 januari 2026

In Iran, the US-Israeli addiction to hybrid warfare is on full display

 



OPINION,
Opinion|Conflict

In Iran, the US-Israeli addiction to hybrid warfare is on full display

Hybrid war tactics help explain why Trump’s strategy oscillates between threats of war and false offers of peace.

ByJeffrey SachsandSybil Fares

Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. Advisor on the Middle East and Africa for UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Published On 19 Jan 2026

Damage caused by an Israeli strike on a building in Tehran is seen on June 26, 2025 [Majid Asgaripour/WANA via Reuters]

In the nuclear age, the United States has to refrain from all-out war since it can easily lead to nuclear escalation. Instead, it wages hybrid wars.

In recent weeks, we have witnessed two such conflicts: in Venezuela and Iran. Both have been waged through a combination of crushing economic sanctions, targeted military strikes, cyberwarfare, stoking unrest and unrelenting misinformation campaigns. Both are long-term CIA projects that have recently escalated. Both will lead to further chaos.end of list

The US has long had two goals vis-a-vis Venezuela: to gain control over its vast oil reserves in the Orinoco Belt and to overthrow its leftist government, which has been in power since 1999. America’s hybrid war against Venezuela dates to 2002 when the CIA helped to support a coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez. When that failed, the US ramped up other hybrid measures, including economic sanctions, the confiscation of Venezuela’s dollar reserves and measures to cripple Venezuela’s oil production, which eventually collapsed. Despite the chaos sown by the US, the hybrid war did not bring down the government.

US President Donald Trump has now escalated to bombing Caracas, kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro, stealing Venezuelan oil shipments and imposing a naval blockade, which, of course, is an act of war. It also seems likely that Trump is thereby enriching powerful pro-Zionist campaign funders who have their eyes on seizing Venezuelan oil assets.

Zionist interests also have their eye on toppling the Venezuelan government since it has long supported the Palestinian cause and maintained close relations with Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cheered on the US attack on Venezuela, calling it the “perfect operation”.

The United States along with Israel is also simultaneously escalating its ongoing hybrid war against Iran. We can expect US and Israeli subversion, air strikes and targeted assassinations. The difference with Venezuela is that the hybrid war on Iran can easily escalate into a devastating regional war, even a global one. US allies in the region, especially the Gulf countries, have been engaged in intensive diplomatic efforts to persuade Trump to back down and avoid military action.

The war on Iran has a history even longer than the war on Venezuela. The first US intervention in the country dates back to 1953 when democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalised Iran’s oil in defiance of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (today’s BP).

The CIA and MI6 orchestrated Operation Ajax to depose Mossadegh through a mix of propaganda, street violence and political interference. They reinstated Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had fled the country, fearing Mossadegh, and helped the shah solidify his grip on power. The CIA also supported the shah by helping create his notorious secret police, SAVAK, which crushed dissent through surveillance, censorship, imprisonment and torture.

Eventually this repression led to a revolution that swept Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power in 1979. During the revolution, students seized US hostages in Tehran after the US admitted the shah for medical treatment, leading to fear that the US would try to reinstall him in power. The hostage crisis further poisoned the relations between Iran and the US.

From then onwards, the US has plotted to torment Iran and overthrow its government. Among the countless hybrid actions the US has undertaken was funding Iraq in the 1980s to wage war on Iran, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths but failing to topple the government.

The US-Israeli objective vis-a-vis Iran is the opposite of a negotiated settlement that would normalise its position in the international system while constraining its nuclear programme. The real objective is to keep Iran economically broken, diplomatically cornered and internally pressured. Trump has repeatedly undercut negotiations that could have led to peace, starting with his withdrawal from the 2016 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement that had seen Iran’s nuclear energy activities monitored and economic sanctions removed.

Understanding the hybrid war tactics helps to explain why Trump’s rhetoric oscillates so abruptly between threats of war and false offers of peace. Hybrid warfare thrives on contradictions, ambiguities and outright deceit.

Last summer, the US was supposed to have negotiations with Iran on June 15 but supported Israel’s bombing of the country two days earlier. For this reason, signs of de-escalation in recent days should not be taken at face value. They can all too readily be followed by a direct military attack.

The examples of Venezuela and Iran demonstrate just how addicted the US and Israel are to hybrid warfare. Acting together, the CIA, Mossad, allied military contractors and security agencies have fomented turmoil across Latin America and the Middle East for decades.

They have upended the lives of hundreds of millions of people, blocked economic development, created terror and generated mass refugee waves. They have nothing to show for spending billions on covert and overt operations beyond the chaos itself.

There is no security, no peace, no stable pro-US or pro-Israel alliance, only suffering. In the process, the US is also going out of its way to undermine the United Nations Charter, which it brought to life in the aftermath of World War II. The UN Charter makes clear that hybrid warfare violates the very basis of international law, which calls on countries to refrain from the use of force against other countries.

There is one beneficiary of hybrid war, and that is the military-tech industrial complex in the US and Israel. US President Dwight Eisenhower warned us in his 1961 farewell address of the profound danger of the military-industrial complex to society. His warning has come to pass even more than he imagined as it is now powered by artificial intelligence, mass propaganda and a reckless US foreign policy.

The world’s best hope is that the other 191 countries of the UN besides the US and Israel finally say no to their addiction to hybrid war: no to regime-change operations, no to unilateral sanctions, no to the weaponisation of the dollar and no to the repudiation of the UN Charter.

The American people do not support the lawlessness of their own government, but they have a very hard time making their opposition heard. They and almost all the rest of the world want the US deep state brutality to end before it’s too late.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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Rightwing influencer with White House ties turns focus to Minnesota

 



Rightwing influencer with White House ties turns focus to Minnesota

Critics draw ‘direct line’ between content by Nick Sortor and similar figures and violent actions of federal agents
A rightwing influencer, who appeared to admit that he recently drove his truck at protesters in Minneapolis, has for years cooperated with the Trump administration even while he has been repeatedly accused of escalating conflict for video content he pumps out to 1.2 million followers on X.
Nick Sortor has received full-throated support of the Trump administration after an October arrest in Portland, and attended an October 2025 White House influencer roundtable on “antifa”.
Sortor’s close relationship with the administration exists despite his previous DUIs and a misdemeanor conviction for criminal mischief and his having absconded from probation in his native Kentucky, where he was reportedly subject to arrest as of last November.
Sortor, 27 of Washington DC, is just one of a new crop of Maga influencers who monetize red meat content for audiences on X and other platforms, and whose depictions of protesters and immigrants as violent criminals appears to be feeding directly into the forceful escalation of Trump administration enforcement actions in Minnesota and around the country.
The Guardian twice emailed a detailed request for comment on this reporting to Nick Sortor on the address listed on his X account as his primary contact point. He did not respond by deadline.
Critics have drawn a “direct line” between the content produced by the likes of Sortor and other video influencers like Nick Shirley and the violent, and occasionally lethal actions of federal immigration agents in Minnesota and beyond.
Jeff Tischauser, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that for content creators like Sortor, “It doesn’t matter what your political affiliation is. If they deem you to be un-American or insufficiently loyal to their goals they will drag your name, they will call you domestic terrorists, they’ll call you a criminal, they’ll call you a violent thug.”
He said the goal of such content creators was to engender “loyalty to Trump administration’s goals above all else. The script is to go out and create content that will falsely label their perceived enemies as domestic terrorists so that they can drum up support within Trump’s base”

A violent incident

Sortor recently posted a video on X which he claimed showed “anti-ICE rioters SURROUNDING my vehicle, smashing my windows, and attempting to kiII” him and fellow rightwing influencer Cam Higby.
He also added an apparent admission that he had driven at the protesters: “I was forced to drive away to save our lives, repeatedly warning those standing in front to GET OUT OF THE WAY. They didn’t listen, so I had no choice but to go anyway.”
Sortor’s version of events was amplified by fellow rightwingers on X, YouTube, and other social media sites. It was also uncritically echoed in many local news reports, and on Fox News.
Mercado Media founder Andrew Mercado offered a different perspective on the exchange of blows between the pair ahead of Sortor’s post.
In successive posts with videos embedded, Mercado first claimed that “NICK SORTOR HITS A FEMALE – she was seen blocking him from filming her friend with a plastic shield, Sortor then knocks it to the ground, blocks her from retrieving it and things escalate and flashbangs, pepper balls are deployed”, adding: “[Sortor] and Higby] have escalated every situation they have entered into. Whether it be Portland, Chicago, D.C. and now Minneapolis.”
Mercado then posted a different view of Sortor’s escape from protesters, writing: “Protesters called police after Sortor hit a female protester. They tried to block him from leaving until police arrived, but Sortor drove through them.” In Mercado’s footage, there are no protesters behind Sortor’s car, and Sortor is seen accelerating rapidly towards protesters in front of the car.
The Guardian emailed Mercado to clarify his understanding of events.

Sortor in Minneapolis

Nick Sortor’s social media feeds indicate he traveled to Minneapolis from Washington DC between 24 December, when he last posted a watermarked video in DC and 29 December, when he posted videos in which he followed DHS officers on door to door visits of “potential fraud sites”.
His visit came in the wake of fellow influencer Nick Shirley’s claimed exposes of day care center fraud by Somali immigrants, which saw influencers flock to the city along with more border agents.
Once there Sortor stood outside Tim Walz’s house with a plush pickle, published video of a Minnesota Hilton hotel that was refusing to book DHS agents, leading Hilton to withdraw the hotel’s franchise. He appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show.
He was also in the city when Renee Good was shot dead by ICE officer Jonathan Ross. In one of many posts responding to the situation, he wrote: “Liberal white women have been radicalized to TERRORIZE ICE.” In the wake of the shooting, Fox News treated Sortor in multiple broadcasts as an authoritative on the ground reporter.
He also had a post on the shooting, which blamed Walz, boosted by Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff who is widely seen as a crucial architect of the deportation crackdown.

‘Keep pushing, ICE! Patriots have your backs’

Sortor bills himself as a fearless journalist. His X bio styles him as “On-scene covering stories MSM won’t”; on Linktree he is “An independent journalist taking deep dives into stories via on-scene reporting”; on TikTok he is simply a “journo”.
In Minneapolis, however, as in his previous excursions to Portland and Chicago, Sortor’s output has comprised little more than partisan cheerleading and celebrations of violence.
In recent days, Sortor has cheered on ICE brutality against protesters in a series of posts on X and Telegram, often reposting videos from a broader network of rightwing influencers, or from independent journalists who monitor protests.
In a Monday post, Sortor wrote in a post to Telegram and X: “LMAO! More and more leftists are getting SPRAYED in the face for harassing ICE agents in Minneapolis.” He added: “ICE agents have HAD ENOUGH, and they’re getting NO HELP from local police” and: “KEEP PUSHING, ICE! PATRIOTS HAVE YOUR BACKS.”
The video shows a plain clothes ICE officer pepper-spraying two people through the open window of his car. In the footage, the officer says “Get back” before spraying and “Get the fuck back, bitch!” after first spraying the people. This is followed by close-up footage of an elderly woman in visible distress.
His X post references a video posted two minutes earlier by fellow rightwing news influencer Eric Daugherty, who writes for pro-Trump website Florida Voice News and spinoff site Rightline News.
The same day, in another Telegram post, Sortor wrote: “ LMAO! A leftist agitator is in TEARS after being sprayed in the FACE by a DHS agent in Minneapolis”. He added: “I could watch this on loop. STOP IMPEDING, and you won’t get sprayed! It’s really pretty simple.”
In the video, an ICE officer pepper sprays a man at close range, incapacitating him.
His video references the original video posted by independent journalist Amanda Moore, who is well known for in-person coverage of protests and other events.
In another post, Sortor reposted a video from Fox News reporter Matt Finn adding: “BREAKING – FAFO IN MINNEAPOLIS: A woman HIT a Border Patrol vehicle with agents inside, while another spit on it, and BOTH of them felt the wrath of Border Patrol’s Tactical Unit”
The video only showed the violent apprehension of the protester, not the incident he claimed had caused it. Nevertheless he added: “This is SO satisfying to watch. NO MERCY!”
Apart from celebrating DHS’s use of force, Sortor has called relentlessly over the last year for Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would permit the deployment of the US military to American cities.
On 12 December, he posted: “DHS agents are being forced to throw TEARGAS into INTERSECTIONS in Minneapolis to stop vioIent leftists from blocking them with their cars
He added: “This situation is CONTINUING to devolve. Agents are sitting ducks right now. We need TROOPS here!”
Arne Holverscheid, a PhD candidate in Political Science at Northwestern University, who has published research on the relationship between fringe political actors and mainstream politicians in the US, said that the relationship between rightwing “citizen journalists” and the Trump administration was “symbiotic”.
“There’s a symbiotic relationship between much more extreme figures who exist primarily online and more established figures who are elected from the Republican party.
He added, “It’s mutually beneficial in that the fringe are not directly affiliated so there’s a plausible deniability for the politicians, but it does help them to sort of move the Overton window”

‘Thank you for being a social media warrior’

Sortor’s rise from obscurity in Kentucky to the upper echelon of pro-Trump influencers coincides with Elon Musk’s ownership of X, which critics say tilted the algorithm in favor of rightwing accounts, and incentivized the production of low quality material.
Tischauser, the SPLC researcher, said: “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Sortor becomes popular or decides to take this route in 2023 after musk purchases X and monetizes X and shifts the algorithm to favor voices like Sortor”.
His earliest successes in attracting widespread attention on X included his coverage of the East Palestine train derailment in February 2023, and traveling to Hawaii in August 2023 to report on the Maui wildfires, both of which he portrayed as a failure of the Biden administration. During his visit, during a live cross for Steve Bannon’s War Room, Sortor was confronted by residents over his coverage of the tragedy.
But his partisan coverage was appreciated by candidate Trump, and eventually by his new administration.
Just a month before the 2024 election, Sortor posted a picture of a personally addressed letter from Trump which began “Thank you for being a social media warrior in the fight to save our country from the Radical Left!” and added: “Comrade Kamala has the Fake News, Big Tech, the Deep State swamp creatures, but I have YOU!”
Since Trump was re-elected, Sortor has traveled to flashpoints elevated by rightwing discourse and administration policy, often appearing to escalate tensions on the scene.
This travel has included cities singled out by the Trump administration for increased immigration enforcement and National Guard occupation.
Last October, he spent several days in the Portland, Oregon, during which time, as The Guardian reported, he had “been involved in multiple physical altercations with protesters in Portland this month, some of which he clearly initiated”.
On 3 October, Sortor was briefly arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct on an evening in which he grabbed a burning American flag from an elderly protester he described as an “Antifa thug”, and later exchanged blows with other protesters.
Multnomah County prosecutors declined to press charges.
In the hours following his release on 3 October, Sortor reportedly received a message from Trump via a White House aide: “Great job. We’re behind you 100%. Let us know if there’s anything we can do. … President DJT.”
The same day, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, defended him from her podium, and criticized Portland police bureau, claiming: “Instead of arresting these violent mob members night after night … the police arrested a journalist who was there trying to document the chaos.”
Then, Trump’s Department of Justice issued threats to city authorities in support of Sortor.
Sortor posted on 3 December: “Attorney General Pam Bondi has ORDERED a full investigation, led by Asst. AG Harmeet Dhillon, of the Portland Police Bureau, following my wrongful arrest last night, Bondi confirmed to me.”
Harmeet Dhillon immediately confirmed this in a repost, writing: “Portland: it’s FO time. Buckle up.” The next day, Dhillon posted: “Portland police arresting journalists such Nick Sortor while giving Antifa goons a free pass is unjust, and will NOT stand in this @TheJusticeDept”.
Before her appointment to the Trump administration, Dhillon previously represented rightwing social media personality Andy Ngo in a largely unsuccessful lawsuit against people who were alleged to have been involved in various alleged attacks on Ngo.
Sortor subsequently filed a tort claim against the city of Portland in December, saying that he planned to sue the city for $10m.
Days after his arrest, Sortor flourished the flag he had obtained in Portland at a Trump-convened roundtable on Antifa at the White House.

Sortor’s Kentucky roots

Apparently the administration is unaware of, or unfazed by Sortor’s own criminal history.
According to November reporting in the Lexington News Observer, Sortor “has been charged twice and convicted once for driving under the influence in Kentucky, was arrested for menacing a police officer in downtown Lexington and was put on probation after pleading guilty to criminal mischief for an incident with a woman who accused him of being violent”.
Journalist Jacqueline Sweet reported on the details of the arrest and court records covering the 2020 incident that led to Sortor’s conviction and probation.
Sortor was charged with 2nd degree burglary, per Sweet, which was reduced to criminal mischief on a plea deal. He was sentenced to two years probation in January 2022, and by June 2023 he had absconded. On 23 June 2023, a judge issued a warrant for his arrest.
Kentucky’s state department of corrections still lists Sortor as an absconded offender online. The Guardian contacted the department of corrections to confirm that the online notice was still current and did not get a response.

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