At the start of the clip, Larrouturou can be seen asking Le Pen, a far-right challenger in France's upcoming presidential elections, about whether she misused European Parliament money to pay her bodyguard's salary. “Is it true that your bodyguard is really your parliamentary assistant?” the reporter asks, before he appears to be pulled backward from behind.

Larrouturou is then dragged out of two doors by the two guards. He shows them his credentials and asks for an apology, but the guards accuse him of assaulting “agents of the police.” The incident soon devolves into threats, insults and whole lot of shoving; at one point, Larrouturou is called the “son of a coward.”

The National Front has denied any responsibility for the incident, noting that the guards were employed by the event organizers. “It's not us,” the party told Le Parisien newspaper. “There were no instructions.” A spokesperson for the event said that there had been a “crowd movement” that led to the incident, but the person did not elaborate.

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Recent polls have the National Front, center-right Republican Party and liberal En Marche! party each splitting about a third of public support. Republican leader and presumptive front-runner Francois Fillon is embroiled in a scandal involving alleged improper payments of more than $500,000 to his wife made by his office using state funding. Analysts see this is as an opening for progressive candidate Emmanuel Macron.

If France's elections in late April result in a plurality, the two candidates with the most votes will enter a runoff. Le Pen, while riding on a surge in nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment that has swept Europe, is less likely to pick up the third-place candidate's voters and is thus considered an underdog.