Fillon affair

On 1 February, an article in the following issue of Le Canard enchaîné claimed that, including the years 1988 to 1990 and 2013, the total wages Penelope Fillon collected as a parliamentary assistant were in fact €813,440.

In all, the article claimed that she received €500,000 as a parliamentary aide, in addition to €100,000 as a literary adviser to the Revue des deux Mondes, whose owner, businessman Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, is a close friend of François Fillon.

[5] On 26 January, François Fillon appeared on TF1 to respond to allegations of the fictitious employment of his wife, stating that she had "edited my speeches" and "stood in for me at events when I couldn’t be there", also claiming that the reason that she was never seen working in the Palais Bourbon was because "she was never on the front line."

[6] However, on 27 January, it was revealed that both Marie and Charles Fillon were only law students when they were employed by their father during his stint in the Senate, contrary to his earlier statements.

[10] A report in the Journal du Dimanche on 29 January alleged that Fillon drew seven checks totaling €21,000 in public funds using a known legal mechanism while Senator for the Sarthe.

[13] Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, president of Revue des deux Mondes, was also separately interrogated in connection with the investigation of fictitious employment.

[16] Le Parisien revealed in a piece published the same day that she had neither a parliament badge nor an email address during the period she supposedly served as a parliamentary assistant.

[20] Increasingly anxious LR deputies, headed by former judge Georges Fenech, expressed concerns about the continued candidacy of Fillon, with some speculating that he could be replaced on the ticket by Alain Juppé, who came second in the primary of the right.

[26] The following morning, officers acting for the PNF and authorized by Gérard Larcher retrieved documents relating to their positions and terms of the pair's employment from the Senate.

[28] On 6 February, Fillon held a press conference at his campaign headquarters at which he "apologized to the French people" and acknowledged that he had committed an "error" in employing family members as parliamentary assistants, but appended that he "never broke the law".

His remarks followed Juppé's declaration that "NO means NO" earlier in the day in response to rumors that he might replace Fillon as the party's candidate should he decide to drop his bid.

The satirical weekly also asserted that she received a double salary during the summer of 2002, as she was hired by Joulaud's office on 13 July, more than a month before her contract as a parliamentary assistant with her husband expired, on 21 August.

An article in the same issue reported that Marie Fillon was simultaneously employed as a parliamentary assistant while training to become a lawyer, taking the first post in October 2005 and entering the EFB in January 2006.

Fillon responded to the claims in a press release by saying that Le Canard conflated the amount his wife collected in November 2013 with reported earnings in August 2007 after the conclusion of her work with Joulaud,[30] and denounced the paper's allegations as "lies", to which editor-in-chief Louis-Marie Horeau [fr] replied that "severance payments [with public funds] were dispensed while another hiring was already scheduled... as for the date, even if there was an imprecision, what would that change?

"[31] Fillon penned a letter appealing to voters printed the same day in Ouest-France, in which he said he "decided not to give in to intimidation and pressure," reaffirmed that his actions were legal, and again apologized for his employment of relatives.

[34] On the evening of 13 February, seventeen dissidents of the Republicans met over dinner, including Georges Fenech, MEP Nadine Morano, and Claude Goasguen to discuss the state of the Fillon campaign with the aim of arriving on a common position before a planned meeting with the party's candidate the following day at which they intended to urge him to "take responsibility".

Seeking to calm the waters and recover his base, Fillon requested a lunch with Nicolas Sarkozy – whose many allies were among those rebelling against the candidate – on 15 February.

Hoping to sway public opinion in their candidate's favor, the campaign team of Fillon also planned to immediately present all the necessary signatures of elected officials at the opening of the sponsorship collection period.

He was informed that he was summoned to appear before the judges and likely to be placed under formal investigation – generally a precursor to an eventual indictment – on 15 March,[43] and subsequently held a press conference at which he insisted on remaining in the race, saying "I will not give in, will not surrender, I will not withdraw, I will fight to the end," and decried what he called an act of "political assassination.

[47] Fillon's house in Paris was searched that morning on the orders of the three investigative judges, with OCLCIFF officers seizing several documents from the residence by mid-afternoon.

[49] Members of Fillon's campaign, as well as supporters, continued to abandon the embattled candidate on 3 March; notable departures included that of spokesmen Thierry Solère and Benoist Apparu.

[52] President of the Senate Gérard Larcher and secretary general of the Republicans Bernard Accoyer met Nicolas Sarkozy to "organize very quickly",[53] with the ex-president warning that "this cannot last" but stopping short of demanding that his former PM desist.

Many elected officials deplored Fillon's denouncements of the judicial system,[58] including politicians on the right such as President of the Regional Council of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Christian Estrosi, who urged him to exit the race.

With a "political committee" planned for the following day, he proposed to assemble a modified campaign team, naming François Baroin, Éric Ciotti, and Luc Chatel, in an attempt to rally support around his candidacy.

In particular, the probe seeks to determine whether documents seized during a search of the National Assembly in March were forged in order to corroborate the veracity of Penelope Fillon's work as a parliamentary assistant.

[76] The edition of Le Canard enchaîné set for publication on 12 April later revealed that François Fillon secured his then-fiancée a job three times the minimum wage in a Parisian ministry as early as 1980, while he was serving as deputy chief of staff to Minister of Defence Joël Le Theule; her contract only ended when Fillon's party lost power to the Socialists, after 15 months.