François Fillon was the guest of the France 2 show – France 2
- Almost three years after his stinging presidential defeat, François Fillon made his media comeback this Thursday in the program “Vous toi la parole”, on France 2.
- The former presidential candidate of 2017 ruled out any return to politics and claimed his innocence in the case of the allegedly fictitious jobs of his wife Penelope, for which he will be tried in a few weeks.
- “I will for the first time, before impartial judges, be able to defend myself,” he said.
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He had the floor, alone. François Fillon was this Thursday evening in the program “Vous vous la parole” on France 2. Exceptionally,
the chain had not confronted its guest with any political opponent or member of civil society. With a hoarse voice, the former strongman of the French right responded for more than an hour to questions from journalists Léa Salamé and Thomas Sotto, mainly on the cases which led to his presidential campaign in 2017 and for which he will be judged late. February.
Came “to defend the honor of [sa] woman and [sa] family “, including his wife Penelope whose “honor was torn to pieces in this affair”, François Fillon proclaimed his innocence, and excluded any return to politics.
A combative accused
One month from the opening of his trial in front of the correctional court of Paris, François Fillon rejected all the accusations which weigh on him. “I cannot let my political life, my commitment disappear behind this trial”, and “I think I owe explanations to the millions of French people who supported me,” he said.
François Fillon, his wife Penelope and his former deputy to the National Assembly, Marc Joulaud, will be tried in the case of the presumed fictitious jobs of Penelope Fillon, for which she would have received more than a million euros between 1998 and 2013 The couple, prosecuted in particular for “embezzlement of public funds”, will also have to answer for “complicity and concealment of abuse of social property” for a partly fictitious job at the Revue des Deux Mondes.
His defense of his wife’s alleged fictitious jobs
“Penelope was my first and most important collaborator. From the start, we worked together, like a very large number of parliamentarians, “he assured about the work of his wife,” on the ground, in Sarthe “, to” manage [son] local agenda, parliamentary mail, supervise or correct speeches ”.
He claims to have provided multiple proofs of his actual work. “Twelve collaborators, members of the prefectural body, and documents attest to the daily work of my wife”. But “the investigating judge did not even read these documents before summoning me for my indictment,” he said. The former MP also assured that his wife “was the most qualified of all [ses] assistants ”, to justify his salary of“ 3,000 euros per month on average ”.
Confronted with a filmed interview of his wife, in which she said in English “never to have been his assistant”, François Fillon invoked a linguistic subtlety: “in English, the word parliamentary assistant has another meaning”. “She sometimes devalues herself by what she can do (…) She has always refused honors, she has always refused to put herself forward,” he added about his wife.
“I was not treated fairly”
The unsuccessful candidate, eliminated in the first round of the presidential election, denounced a “fully charged procedure”. “I was not treated fairly. The minute this case was started by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office, it was decided to prevent me from winning the presidential election. ” By winning the primary, “I may have unleashed very powerful forces,” he said, without further details.
But later in the show, François Fillon seemed less convinced of the thesis of a “black cabinet” determined to bring it down, as he said in 2017. “There is a book, lots of things and most importantly, a fact. How can we imagine that the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office will launch an investigation against the favorite of the presidential election, just hours after the publication of an article, without the President of the Republic being aware? But he concluded: “It’s over, it’s behind me, I’m no longer in controversy.”
Two “mistakes”
François Fillon conceded two missteps. First his sentence on General de Gaulle. “I made the mistake of provoking Nicolas Sarkozy with this sentence,” he said about the spike, implicitly referring to the former head of state and his legal affairs during a televised debate. from the primary of the right. This punchline he then came back to him like a boomerang, and François Fillon regrets it all the more since he “almost never attacked people in 40 years of political life”.
Still on the subject of Nicolas Sarkozy, the man who was his Prime Minister claims to have “never asked” for the acceleration of proceedings against him in the Bygmalion case. “If François Hollande says that, he is lying.”
“I made a second mistake, a kind of blindness […] not seeing that accepting this gift[[luxury costumes offered by lawyer Robert Bourgi]would have an absolutely disastrous effect. ” According to the applicant, a “double error”, first of “confidence” in someone “who did not deserve it”, and then of “blindness in not seeing” that it “would have a disastrous effect”.
But he is not a money man, he said. “I had a heritage lower than that of Mr. Mélenchon. My heritage is limited to my house in Sarthe. I have no apartment in Paris, no villa by the sea, no Ferrari hidden in the barn of my house, “he said.
No return to politics
The man who became a member of parliament at the age of 27 is now finished with politics. “Forty years is a long time,” he said, and “I have dragged my family through an ordeal of unprecedented violence and I have no desire to drag them into this violence again.” Asked about a possible local mandate, he replied that he “turned the page completely”, at 65 years old.
Now a consultant in a private practice, he was even delighted to have “successfully completed a professional retraining which for me is a success”. This did not stop him from commenting on political news, arguing for the lowering of the retirement age.
In three weeks, François Fillon will be in court, “a test to which [il n’aurait] never imagined being confronted ”. But “I hope it will be a fair trial, I trust the bench.” “What I’m asking is to be judged like everyone else, fairly,” he said. I must have made mistakes. But one thing I can’t bear is that people think I’m dishonest, that I tried to cheat or deceive the French. “
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