Le Pen, who is aiming to win the Elysee at her fourth attempt next year in a far-right breakthrough that would send a shockwave across Europe, lambasted the Mediapart website that published the claims and said Bardella has her "total confidence".
Bardella, who has vehemently denied making the comments disparaging Jewish people dating back to 2013, when he was a teen, said the report marked the start of a "total war" to derail Le Pen's campaign and said he was taking legal action against Mediapart.
"We are seeing the beginnings of a total war, an attempt to destabilise the presidential campaign," Bardella, flanked by Le Pen, told party deputies, saying he believed the allegations were an operation prepared "for several months".
The 31-year-old is the leader of Le Pen's National Rally (RN) party and is tipped to be premier if she wins the presidency. A savvy user of social media, he has helped the RN make inroads among the youth vote.
Le Pen vowed the RN would "counterattack" and warned "our opponents will do absolutely anything -- including the most disgusting things -- to try to derail this momentum" ahead of the 2027 election for a successor to centrist President Emmanuel Macron.
Mediapart's editorial co-director Lenaig Bredoux said Bardella's "total war" remarks demonstrate "the staggering violence of this far right that claims to be respectable".
"These attacks are nothing new. The National Rally regularly bans media outlets from its events, attacks newspapers, and targets local reporters," she wrote on the Mediapart website.
'Do absolutely anything'
A poll published Monday suggested that Le Pen would easily lead the first round of voting in the elections next year, and would defeat any challenger in the second round run-off to win the Elysee.
She is planning to stand despite a conviction for a fake jobs scam in the European Parliament, a case Le Pen also says was falsified by opponents.
The party scored a notable political breakthrough at the weekend by winning enough seats in the French Senate -- which is chosen by elected local officials -- to form a parliamentary group in the upper house for the first time.
Responding to suggestions the allegations could have come from individuals expelled from the RN in a purge of extremists, Bardella said: "Either Mediapart orchestrated this, or Mediapart itself was tricked by powerful figures behind the scenes with an interest in destabilising the presidential campaign."
'No PR agency will change that'
Mediapart's investigation is built on comments in private chats allegedly written by Bardella in the summer of 2013 when he was 17 or 18 years old.
Mediapart maintains it authenticated the comments. It did not specify where the messages had been written, nor did it publish screenshots.
According to the report, Bardella wrote, among other comments, in a chat: "The Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so."
Bardella has been a key player in Le Pen's project of "de-demonisation" to make the RN into an electable force and to expunge the legacy of her late father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded and led what was then the National Front (FN) and repeatedly made antisemitic remarks.
In Israel, the minister for diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, defended Bardella.
Posting on X, he said the French politician was "one of the clearest voices in Europe against Hamas" and had spoken against antisemitism while in Jerusalem.
Chikli also attacked Mediapart and accused it of "character assassination".
Bardella made an unprecedented visit to Israel in 2025, the first by a French far-right leader.
Critics, however, said the controversy showed the movement had not changed since the heyday of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who sensationally reached the run-off of the 2002 presidential elections.
"The far right will always remain the far right," said centre-left presidential contender Raphael Glucksmann, who next month will take part in a primary run by the Socialists.
"No PR agency, no facelift will change that. Let us never forget that they all joined a party founded by fanatical antisemites and avowed racists," he added.
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