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François Fillon, Candidate in French Election, Vows to Run Despite Inquiry François Fillon, French Presidential Candidate, Vows to Run Despite Inquiry
(about 4 hours later)
PARIS — François Fillon, the conservative candidate, defiantly declared on Wednesday that he would not abandon his bid for the French presidency, four days after prosecutors said they were opening a formal investigation into his possible misuse of public funds. PARIS — France’s embattled center-right presidential candidate, François Fillon, defiantly vowed on Wednesday to stay in the race, even as he announced that he would be formally charged in a widening embezzlement investigation.
Mr. Fillon’s campaign announced earlier in the day that he would not be visiting the annual Salon International de l’Agriculture in Paris, normally an obligatory stop for politicians seeking to draw support from France’s important farming sector, prompting widespread speculation that he would pull out of the race. Mr. Fillon’s announcement, made at a news conference, added another element of uncertainty to an already unsettled campaign and increased the likelihood that France’s presidential race will be fought by two candidates from neither of the traditional mainstream parties.
Instead, speaking in Paris, Mr. Fillon said that his lawyers had informed him that he had received a summons on Wednesday, but he likened the investigation to a political assassination and said, “I will not give in.” With formal charges looming that he had paid his wife and children hundreds of thousands of euros from the public payroll for little or no work, Mr. Fillon’s chances of making it past the first round on April 23 in France’s two-round election are diminished in the view of most analysts.
Mr. Fillon’s campaign was thrown into turmoil in January after Le Canard Enchaîné, a weekly satirical newspaper that is also known for its investigative journalism, reported that Mr. Fillon’s wife, Penelope, had been paid with taxpayer money for a bogus job assisting him and his deputy in the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament. That leaves the field open to the far-right candidate of the National Front, Marine Le Pen, whose steady rise in polls has sent jitters through financial markets and France’s immigrant suburbs. Her likely contender is Emmanuel Macron, the former economy minister, who is running as the candidate of his own political movement.
The scandal surrounding Mr. Fillon escalated when French prosecutors said they had opened a full-scale investigation into whether he had embezzled public funds, threatening to make his candidacy increasingly untenable. Mr. Fillon, who has played up his moral probity during his candidacy, has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. Mr. Macron, 39, is currently the favorite to defeat Ms. Le Pen, 48, in the second round on May 7. But Mr. Macron, a former Rothschild banker, is untested and inexperienced politically. His centrist program, some of it in line with the Socialist government he served, is viewed as unappealing to parts of the right-leaning electorate. The momentum, in most of the polls, is with her.
The candidate has struggled to campaign effectively since the revelations were made public. He has consistently and adamantly maintained his innocence, lashing out at the news media and insisting that hiring his wife and two of his children was legal. There are no rules in France against lawmakers hiring family members, as long as the work is genuine. A top National Front official, Florian Philippot, used a television interview after Mr. Fillon’s appearance largely to attack Mr. Macron — a clear indication that Ms. Le Pen already considers him her principal opponent.
In an article published on Wednesday before Mr. Fillon’s news conference, the French daily Le Monde described him as a “candidate in a bunker” who was “hunched up” and “in his shell.” It noted that he no longer traveled by train for campaign trips out of fear of being called out by protesters. Even as Mr. Fillon, 62, is increasingly being written off, he has doubled down on his defense, yielding no ground to his critics.
If Mr. Fillon had dropped out of the race, the greatest beneficiaries would most likely have been Emmanuel Macron, 39, who has started his own political movement and who favors keeping the country in the European Union; and Marine Le Pen, a right-wing populist whose potent cocktail of protectionist economic policies and right-wing nationalism has resonated with voters. “It’s Fillon’s final bet,” said Laurent Bouvet, a political scientist at the University of Versailles St.-Quentin-en-Yvelines. “He’s playing all or nothing. The right, the heart of the right, the one that elected him and doesn’t want Le Pen to sweep the stakes, his bet is they won’t abandon him, in spite of all his legal problems.”
Mr. Fillon, a 62-year-old former prime minister, triumphed in primaries for center-right parties in November, edging out Alain Juppé, a former prime minister, and Nicolas Sarkozy, a former president. In another country, the shadow hanging over Mr. Fillon would most likely end a campaign for the highest office. But in France, legal problems, even serious ones, rarely end political careers, even though the electorate appears to be demonstrating — in polls at least — less tolerance than previously for accommodating financial misdeeds in high places.
He campaigned on a conservative platform, promising to impose stricter administrative controls on Islam and immigration and to champion traditional French values. He vowed to cut state spending and overhaul labor rules, and he sought to project an image of probity and honesty. Even if he were to step aside, his center-right Republican Party has few good options. Mr. Fillon’s two main challengers in the party primary both campaigned under the shadow of past and current investigations.
In France, if no presidential candidate wins a majority of votes outright in the first round, set for April 23, then the top two move to a second round. Until recently, polling has indicated that Ms. Le Pen would lead in the first round, which is often used by voters to vent frustrations, and that she would face either Mr. Fillon or Mr. Macron in the second round, which this year would be held May 7. The runner-up in the primary, Alain Juppé, had been convicted in a phony jobs scheme undertaken while he worked at City Hall several decades ago. Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president who finished third, is the subject of multiple investigations, and in February, he was ordered to stand trial on charges of illegally financing his failed 2012 presidential campaign.
But Mr. Fillon’s problems, immediate and future, are different. He campaigned as the candidate of probity. That image has been shattered. And the sums alleged to have been pocketed by his wife have shocked the French.
Ms. Le Pen is not untainted by corruption allegations. But her legal difficulties, for now, have hardly dented her standing in the polls — partly because she has never cultivated an image of virtue, and partly because her principal adversary is the European Parliament in Strasbourg, in which she sits and which is widely unpopular, especially among her supporters.
Her legal troubles are also more complex than Mr. Fillon’s, and she is not suspected of having personally benefited from any of the alleged financial wrongdoing.
Last week, a top Le Pen aide was charged in an alleged phony jobs scheme. The aide was paid out of Parliament funds but was thought to have spent her time working for the National Front.
Another close associate of Ms. Le Pen’s, Frédéric Chatillon, has been charged with violating campaign finance laws. Mr. Chatillon’s ties to extremist groups on the far right have been closely documented in the French news media as well.
Ms. Le Pen, invoking her parliamentary immunity, has refused a summons from the police who want to question her in the alleged phony jobs scheme, eliciting harsh criticism from government officials who accuse her of holding herself above the law. Like Mr. Fillon, she could still be formally charged.
She and Mr. Fillon have struck remarkably similar defenses as the allegations have piled up around them. Both blamed the news media as well as the judicial system and civil servants for their problems.
On Sunday, in a fiery speech in the western city of Nantes, Ms. Le Pen lashed out at judges, the legal system, civil servants and the news media, in a manner very similar to Mr. Fillon’s on Wednesday — and for that matter, President Trump’s in the United States.
Ms. Le Pen said all of them were working in concert to undermine her. “The rule of law is the opposite of government by judges,” Ms. Le Pen told her cheering supporters.
“Judges exist to apply the law,” she said, “not to subvert the will of the people.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Fillon struck a defiant tone in front of the reporters at his campaign headquarters in Paris, proclaiming his innocence and denouncing what he said was an unfair judicial and news media campaign intended to destroy his candidacy.
“I didn’t embezzle any money,” Mr. Fillon told reporters. “I employed — like almost a third of the members of Parliament — family members because I knew I could count on their loyalty and competence. They helped me, and I will prove it.”
“From the beginning,” he continued, “I haven’t been treated as an ordinary suspect.”
And he insisted: “The rule of law has been systematically violated. The press has been an echo chamber for the prejudices of the prosecutors.”
Mr. Fillon said angrily that the presidential election was being “assassinated,” and he announced his determination to stay in it, because “only the voters can decide who will be president.”
The judicial screws have been steadily tightening on Mr. Fillon since newspaper reports in January — especially those in the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné — that said for years he and his deputy had paid his wife hundreds of thousands of euros in state funds for a possible do-nothing job, and that his children had also benefited from the former prime minister’s largess.
In addition, Mr. Fillon is being looked at on suspicion of trafficking of a high civilian honor, while prime minister, in exchange for money to his wife from a wealthy publisher friend.
On Wednesday, in front of dozens of aides and members of his center-right party, Mr. Fillon told reporters he would answer a March 15 summons by the magistrates in the case, after which he is expected to be formally charged. The investigation will continue and Mr. Fillon could then stand trial, or the magistrates could drop the charges.
Circumstances look increasingly unfavorable for him. In an article published on Wednesday before Mr. Fillon’s news conference, the French daily Le Monde described him as a “candidate in a bunker” who was hunched up and in his shell. It noted that he no longer took the train for campaign trips out of fear of being called out by protesters.
He is often met by protesters banging pots, or “casseroles” in French — a slang term for corruption affairs. Sometimes the placards read, “Fake jobs for everybody.”