François and Penelope
François Fillon was born in 1954, in Le Mans, France. Penelope Clarke was born in 1955, in Llanover, UK. Baby Boomers.
She came of age during the Second Wave of the Women’s Movement–Women’s Lib–which meant that the choices she would make were more or less hers (more or less) and not imposed on her by her gendered destiny–which meant, too, that anxieties about possible wrong choices were hers as well. He came of age politically during the 1980s, a time of neoliberal slashing and burning of social welfare, labor protections, job security. He did not at all mind when he was called “the French Margaret Thatcher.”
They met while she was doing her “year” in France, as a part of her degree in the French language; she was planning to study law after that. He was a hard-working parliamentary assistant (ironically, as we’ll see) and they married in 1980, the civil ceremony performed by his parents’ best friend and Mayor of Sablé-sur-Sarthe, Joël La Theule. While driving to Spain afterwards, they were in a serious car accident and went plummeting into a ditch. They spent part of their honeymoon in the hospital (Gala, January 13, 2017). The religious ceremony was celebrated in her hometown of Abergavenny, Wales, an Anglican service also presided over by a Catholic priest. (Two years later his brother Pierre married her sister Jane.)
His Assembly career came sooner than he would have expected. He had served as the parliamentary assistant of Joël Le Theule, a deputy in the National Assembly as well as mayor, and had followed him into the Ministries of Transport and then, briefly, of Defense. La Theule’s sudden fatal heart attack in December 1980 left the constituency open; Fillon ran for it and won in the first round. He was only 27 when he took his seat in 1981, and was the “benjamin,” or youngest. It was the first National Assembly of the new Socialist Party president, François Mitterand, and he was a member of the opposition, the RPR (Rally for the Republic), or Gaullist conservative party, that would be folded into UMP (Union for the Popular Movement) in 2002 and renamed Les Républicains in 2015.
The video below, on the eve of his entry into the National Assembly, is untranslated, but François doesn’t say very much, and is spared any controversial questions. He expresses his enjoyment of campaigning, of getting to know his constituents. He is not concerned that his party is in the minority, in fact wishes to “get my teeth into the political struggle” by being in the opposition. He acknowledges that he is “inexperienced,” but that he will bring “a new way of seeing things” to the National Assembly.
He lived in Paris during the week; she decided to live in the constituency, in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, population currently about 12,500. She would say, later, that it was a good thing to have a foothold in the constituency; it also spared her from the fishbowl of Paris political society. Their first child, Marie, was born in 1982; Charles, in 1984; Antoine, in 1985; Édouard, in 1989; and Arnaud, in 2001. She was heard to say that if Arnaud had not come along, she would have gone back to work (Bommery, p. 121).
In 1993 they purchased the château of Beaucé, in the even smaller village of Solesmes, not far from Sablé-sur-Sarthe, where she raised their children and horses; she frequently called herself a paysanne, or peasant, but the overall look, including the horses and the dreadful fashion choices, was very English “county” style. François came home on weekends and drove his tractor around the estate. (See photos of the château in The Local, November 28, 2016)
In Paris, François Fillon had a steadily rising career in politics, becoming one of the ténors or great men of the party, picking up several ministries along the way, and serving for five years as President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Prime Minister, from 2007-2012. Penelope, who had divided her time between Paris and Solesmes during his other ministries, now had to live in Matignon Palace, the home of the Prime Minister. She had had some ambitions, apparently, to breed purebred horses; now she had to sell them, to a young competitive rider (Bommery, p. 131).
As Second Lady of France, when François was prime minister, she made some important acquaintances, presided over dinners, was seen at art galleries and theatre openings, accompanied him on trips. (A series of photos here show an attractive woman–more attractive than she likely believed–but most show her palpable discomfort at being in the public eye.)
Oddly enough, despite her unhappiness in the spotlight, she had her own lane, all to herself, as the discreet devoted wife. No one else was challenging her for that spot. Sarkozy and his publicly passive-aggressive second wife Cécilia were divorced in 2007. In 2008 he married supermodel Carla Bruni at Eurodisney. Even the successor “Mr. Normal,” François Hollande, welcomed two First Ladies to the Elysées Palace in the course of his five years, and the first of them, Valerie Trierweiler, published a 2014 memoir, Merci pour ce moment (Thank you for this moment) about their relationship and break-up. In contrast the Fillons opened up their home(s) sparingly, to Paris-Match, in photoshoots that showcased their handsome family (see Paris Match retrospective).
A 2010 Paris Match article is an indication that they were (or he was) already preparing the campaign for the presidency and the family story–a traditional one, to be sure, with a clear division of labor. “She’s my rock. My home port,” he had allegedly said to somebody at some point. In response, they quoted her: “My husband doesn’t have the killer instinct”–as always, when she spoke of him, an ambiguous remark. (Should he have a killer instinct?) Part of making this storyline work was to describe François as “introverted,” with a complicated personality that needed soothing. But a pesky quote from someone about his being a “zen master” found its way into the article, and in fact the one common thread among those who knew François was his calmness in crisis. The article ruthlessly plowed under the stray comment: “How can he lose his footing,” the author concluded, “with a woman who is frightened of nothing?” (Paris Match, October 13, 2010).
Family. Fidelity. Honesty. That was the carefully cultivated Fillon image.
Sarkozy was defeated in 2012 for a second term by François Hollande. Fillon as prime minister became an obvious next choice to lead the party and run for President; but he was not the choice of Sarkozy, who considered him an eternal “number two.” And he and Sarkozy did not like each other–or rather, Fillon did not like Sarkozy, and Sarkozy seems not to have thought much about it until Fillon got in the way of his plan to retake the presidency. Fillon burned his bridges with the Sarkozystes during the four-year struggle, between the presidential elections of 2012 and the party presidential primary in 2016, in the contest over the leadership of the party and over who would be the next presidential candidate.
Fillon believed, as his campaign manager suggests, that political victory was not about infighting, the parry and thrust of internecine battles, but about character and big ideas (Stefanini, p. 142). And that seemed to work for him. Les Républicains had their first presidential primary ever in 2016, and Fillon was the come-from-behind biggest vote-getter on November 20, ahead of Sarkozy himself who came in third, and Alain Juppé, party eminence and Mayor of Bordeaux, who came in second. That result set up a brief second-round primary struggle between Fillon and Juppé–and between Penelope and Isabelle.
BFMTV put together footage of the two wives. Though neither scores high on the MichelleObamameter, Isabelle Juppé, a journalist and novelist, had prepared her remarks, and speaks of her husband’s strength in the face of crisis and his firmness of character. She talks in broad strokes about his vision as well as his widely praised revival of Bordeaux as mayor, finally sticking the landing with one of the major Juppé campaign themes: “What he has done for Bordeaux, he can do for France.”
The footage on Penelope came from a specially organized forum, “Les femmes avec Fillon.” He was promoting three major initiatives: aid to widows and single mothers, including a priority for them in social housing and crèches; measures to curb violence against women; the enforcement of legal equality between men and women. He had a number of proposals under those rubrics, including teaching respect for women in schools and helping mothers in (immigrant, Islamic) quartiers in their struggle against the radicalization of their children. A number of prominent women in politics and business spoke on his behalf, promoting his agenda, “at the side of a silent and self-effacing Penelope Fillon.” She did say a few words, stating (as we see in this video) in rusty, unpracticed French that she had been “in her husband’s shadow” for 35 years, but now would step forward, because he had never run for president before. She was as usual double-edged in her praise of him–”he has evolved”– (from what?) and later explained to the reporter why she had not also taken the podium to discuss his policies in detail: “I didn’t work on this program for women, so I allowed the experts to speak.” And though no one seemed to pick up on it at the time, this last remark was in fact rather curious, in light of what came later (PublicSenat.fr, November 22, 2016).
Fillon posted a handy win in the second round of the primary on November 27. On December 1, 2016, François Hollande said he would not run for a second term, leaving the Socialist Party without a leader until their own primary in early 2017. The lack of an incumbent in the race, a strong belief in “l’alternance“–the alternation of the two largest and strongest parties, the Parti socialiste and Les Républicains–suggested that the Republican candidate would win in 2017. Fillon found himself sitting on a large lead in the polls, and it looked as if he could await his victory lap with some sense of security.
The women’s section of Le Figaro, November 21, 2016, just after he had made it into the second round of the primary, drew heavily from the Paris Match articles published earlier–she was his “rock” in the storms, content to remain in the shadows but always adapting to what was needed. In a strange metaphor, she was, “A rock that nothing frightens. Not even a presidential campaign.” The Fillons even made it into the Daily Mail, which was interested in the race from the Penelope angle, and covered the story with its trademark combination of great photos and factual inaccuracies (The Daily Mail, November 22, 2016).
On January 25, 2017, just a few months before the elections that would take François and Penelope to the Elysées Palace, the world turned upside down.
Le Canard Enchaîné, a century-old satirical newspaper whose subject is politics, broke particularly damaging information about the couple; the situation was instantly named “Penelopegate”. (The Duck in Chains is not online, so there is no link.) The Duck reported that Penelope had been on the books as her husband’s “parliamentary assistant” for a number of years, taking in a total of about 500,000 euros. Their initial reporting was actually an undercounting, and they and other journals quickly realized that the sum for the “fictitious job” was over 800,000 euros, from 1998 on. (Plus the money taken in from hiring the two oldest children, as it turned out.). Her biographer, Sylvie Bommel, discovered that Penelope had actually received her first salary as parliamentary assistant in 1986, until December 1990; at that time, Bommel reminds us, her children were four, two, and one, and a fourth was born in 1989. She received this 1,800 salary per month, at the time when the minimum wage (smic) was at 740 euros per month (by conversion; France was still on the franc, and both are gross salaries; Bommery, pp. 94-96).
By what seems unspoken agreement, however, the newspapers started her parliamentary assistant career in April 1998, when Penelope was hired as François’s assistant once again until 2002 (their last child, Arnaud, was born in 2001), at a salary more than double the previous one (Bommel, p. 116). In 2002, she began to work for his suppléant, Marc Joulaud.
Brief explanation: Deputies get what is called an “envelope” of monthly stipends to hire up to five assistants or collaborators; as of 2016, the total monthly sum that deputies were given to allocate was 9,561 euros per month. It is not illegal to hire a wife or grown child, but they actually have to work. As for the suppléant: when a candidate runs for the National Assembly he designates his “substitute,” or suppléant, who will take over his seat if the candidate dies or takes higher office–as Fillon did, for example, in becoming the head of various ministries and then prime minister from 2007-2012, under Sarkozy, when his suppléant Marc Joulaud again took his place. And Joulaud hired Penelope, at a salary fixed by his “patron” Fillon (Bommery, p. 125).
Back to the Duck of January 25, 2017.
Le Canard reported the steep rises in her compensation. In 2001, while working for her husband, she was making 3,900 euros/month, and in 2002 her salary was bumped up to 4,600 euros/month. In May of that year François became Ministre des affaires sociales du travail et de la solidarité. She had up to then lived in the family chateau in Solesmes. Now, with his assumption of the ministry, she moved to Paris, at least part-time; and her residence in Paris would be of some significance when she tried to explain her work for his suppléant as based on her work in the district in Sarthe. Marc Joulaud, then, became deputy in 2002, and immediately hired her as his full time parliamentary assistant, at 6,900 euros/month. The salary had risen by 2006 to an extraordinary 7,900 euros a month. (The amount of this salary was itself illegal: no single assistant was supposed to get more than 50% of the monthly allowance of 9,561 euros (l’Humanité, March 2, 2017). )
Joulaud’s actual assistants were each paid from another purse–Igor Mitrofanoff (Fillon’s speechwriter) received his salary as a “technical consultant” for Fillon’s ministerial office, while Jeanne Robinson-Behre was paid by an LR Senator from the Sarthe. When questioned, Robinsen-Behre stated that she had never seen Penelope Fillon in the office, and knew her only as the Minister’s wife. Christine Kelly, author of Fillon’s authorized biography (and thus with much access to the Fillon family) was not aware of her work as assistant: “I never heard that Mme Fillon worked. No one ever spoke to me about that. It didn’t come out, either, in an interview I had with her or from several others with François Fillon. . . . for me, she was simply a housewife (une femme au foyer) who was occupied with the care of her children.”
Le Canard had searched for traces of local activity in Sablé-sur-Sarthe in the local newspapers, and found very little; the town priest, Father Louis, quoted in Les Nouvelles de Sablé of May 5, 2007, said, “François Fillon has a wife of gold, discreet, who knows how to keep her place and raise her children.” Le Canard also noted an interview with Penelope in The Telegraph of May 20, 2007, shortly after François became prime minister, which would within a few days become critical.
Penelope Fillon had ended her employment for Joulaud on August 31, 2007 (with, as it would later be noted, a hefty severance payment); at that time her husband had been prime minister for three months, with a monthly salary of 21,300 euros.
François Fillon had quit his prime ministership after Sarkozy was defeated, in May 2012, and he successfully won a seat as deputy from Paris–and rehired Penelope, for six months, at 4,600 euros/month. In addition she became a “literary consultant” for the venerable Revue des Deux Mondes, paid 5,000 euros per month; the editor at the time was paid 6,000 euros per month. She held that “position” from May 2012 to December, 2013. The editor, Michel Crépu, who had since gone to Gallimard, was gobsmacked to learn that she had been part of his editorial staff: “This is incredible, I’m astonished.” He recalled that the owner of the Revue, the billionaire Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, had once asked him to send a few books to review to “Mme Fillon, who is bored.” Crépu had received about one and a half pages of “book notes” from her, but nothing else. Ladreit de Lacharrière had received the Grand Cross of the Légion d’Honneur at the end of 2010, when François was prime minister.
The Canard concluded their story with the report that she had recently been elected to the town council in the village of Solesmes: “Penelope Fillon has up to now been known for her talents as a juror in contests for tarts or Shetland ponies, for her assiduity at the mass of the Abbey de Solesmes, and for her domestic occupations. But behind her little air of being so British (sic), this Welsh native hid a hectic professional life.”
(If you like some sexism and misogyny with your satire, then Le Canard Enchaîné is for you.)
The story was devastating, not only because the total sum was so enormous, at 500,000 euros, later revealed to be closer to 800,000 euros when everything was added up, but because Fillon had presented himself as the man of honesty and probity (and unlike his chief competitors in Les Républicains primary, Nicolas Sarkozy and Alain Juppé, he had never been indicted). He was also the candidate of fiscal austerity–at least, austerity for those who were already strapped for cash–by promising to partially privatize the state-funded health care system, by planning to fire 500,000 civil servants and by cutting expenses and closing local services. The disparity between the belt-tightening he would prescribe for others, and the luxuries he allowed himself, created the appearance and reality of extraordinary hypocrisy.
Add to that: the timing could not have been worse. The story broke on Tuesday night, January 24, when AFP alerted the public to the main outlines of Le Canard’s revelations that would appear on the following day. According to Matthieu Goar and Alexandre Lemarié, two Le Monde journalists who covered the campaign, Fillon apparently did not fully realize the seriousness of what was before him; worse still, no one in his camp had received the slightest confirmation or briefing from him, including his chief spokesman, Thierry Solère (Goar and Lemarié, pp. 105-107). Fillon might have had time to cancel his next day’s activities, but chose to go on as if nothing was amiss. The long-planned day was an important photo-op/reconciliation/endorsement between Fillon and his second-round primary rival Alain Juppé, mayor of Bordeaux, to bring together the right and moderate wings of the party. Juppé was eager to showcase Bordeaux–their new Cité du vin museum, opened in 2016, and their pilot training facility.
Now Juppé was in an extremely awkward spot, trying to absorb the news, unsure of what revelations the coming days might bring, unwilling to give a full-throated endorsement to someone who might have committed illegal acts, and whose program he did not particularly like anyway. Perhaps that is why Juppé was late, leaving Fillon at the mercy of the reporters waiting to hear his explanation about the story that had just dropped.
Thus Fillon made his first recorded comment on the Penelope affair on the sidewalk in Bordeaux: “I see that the stink bombs are starting to come. I will not make a comment because there is nothing to comment on. I will simply say that I am scandalized by the contempt and misogyny of this article. Because she’s my wife she doesn’t have the right to work? Imagine a moment that a politician [as opposed to a journalist] would say of a woman, as this article does, that she only knows how to make jam?” That was hardly the point, of course. Juppé arrived and they sat grimly side by side trying on night-vision helmets at the pilot training center (France 3 Nouvelle-Aquitaine, January 26, 2017).
Juppé remained noncommittal to reporters. No one in Fillon’s camp knew what was going on, even as they were being asked to comment. Thierry Solère, his spokesman, confirmed that Mme Fillon had been her husband’s collaboratrice, but would not verify any of the sums; he also noted that spouses were frequently the collaboratrices of their husbands. (Was the reverse true?) Bernard Accoyer, former president of the National Assembly, stated that he had often seen her at the Palais Bourbon–this before it was revealed that she did not have a pass to get into the Assembly buildings, as all assistants did, nor did she have a mailbox, nor an Assembly email. Bruno Retailleau, a Fillon loyalist, also confirmed that she had worked but placed her as a regional worker in Sarthe. Obviously they needed to get the story straight, and there was a small meeting of the inner circle, including campaign director Patrick Stefanini, in Bordeaux on the evening of the 25th to work on a communications and response strategy. They decided to go on offense. François Fillon would demand to be heard immediately before the courts, in order to get the nonsense out of the way. His attorney, Antonin Levy (son of Bernard Henri), would assemble some documents to show that she had worked (that would prove to be nearly impossible). And finally, Fillon tweeted that he would appear on January 26 on TF1 (Le Journal du Dimanche, January 26, 2017).
His January 26 interview, parts of which can be seen here, TF1 Interview, posted January 26, 2017 and here, C-News, posted January 27, 2017, was his first prepared explanation. He expressed his determination to stay in the race; he noted that there was “something rotten in our democracy,” that he wanted a “debate of ideas”–but that he had been under attack from the very first; he did not yet say by whom. The interviewer offered him a potential way out: “Beyond the legal aspects, there are the personal and ethical ones. Don’t you have any regrets? Haven’t you said to yourself, ‘I used and abused a system, [which was] certainly legal, but a little shaky, and I should have abstained?’” Fillon doubled down instead. Without his wife’s work, “I would not be where I am”–by which he meant running for president. “She corrected my speeches, she received innumerable people who wanted to see me that I couldn’t see myself, she represented me in demonstrations and [non-governmental] meetings, she drew up syntheses of press accounts for me . . . ” He also added, to the surprise of his campaign staff, that the only way he would stop his campaign would be if he were indicted (mis en examen). That possibility was no longer merely theoretical: the Parquet national financier opened an investigation into the allegations on January 26. Brought into being in December 2013 to clean up after the Cahuzac affair (too complex to go into here, but believe me: very bad), the PFN had jurisdiction over large and complex financial cases, or cases that had a national impact. Within days, François and Penelope, their two oldest children, and many of their associates, would be deposed.
On January 29, François Fillon had an official campaign kickoff at La Villette. All the party greats had big smiles, though one sees some anxiety behind them (or maybe it’s just my imagination) in the fuller footage of what had been planned as a triumphant rally (See François Fillon site, January 29, 2017). Penelope received a standing ovation; it was early days yet, and they were still in a state of denial.
Two days later, Penelope spoke.
Or rather, she had spoken in 2007, just as her husband was entering into his new position as prime minister. The Telegraph article, by Kim Willsher, also married to a French husband, is a very friendly and upbeat piece, especially given Penelope’s demeanor throughout the discussion. And the published interview did not include the most explosive statement: “I was never my husband’s parliamentary assistant,” a sentence that came roaring out of the past (The Telegraph, May 20, 2007). But there was a tape. And it was broadcast on February 2.
The television show, Envoyé Spécial, had only snippets from the interview, showcasing the brief statement that she had never been her husband’s assistant, as well as the equally damaging remark, given her subsequent defense, that she had never dealt with his mail. But it did have some interviews with the people in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, those who had worked with him or known him, who were truly heartsick. They had regarded him as a good man for years; they were proud of him, a local boy made good. They were shocked at the total sums of money, and hoped for an explanation, although they clearly did not have great expectations of one; no one had been aware of Penelope’s work, or had even seen her very often. Their sorrow was for François. Later, reporters ventured across the channel to speak to the people of Abergavenny, BFMTV, as solid and stout-hearted as the English of Penelope’s nostalgia, who wanted to see some proof that the accusations were true.
There was, in addition, a nearly-hourlong tape in English between Penelope and the reporter. It was not meant to be aired; it was filmed in a noisy café, and there is a four minute gap, starting at 38 minutes in, in the sound. What comes through most clearly in the full tape is Penelope’s unhappiness. She has made nothing of her life. Her older children are leaving the nest. She dislikes the French and all things French. She lives in a constant state of longing, listening to the BBC, reading English newspapers, socializing with other English expats.
François’s attorney had stated, even before the broadcast, that the devastating remark–”I’ve never been my husband’s assistant”–had been misinterpreted. “In May 2007, some days after the nomination of François Fillon to Matignon [the prime ministership, named after the official residence], Penelope Fillon tried to make a British journalist understand . . . (sic) that she did not have the same conception of her role as that of the wife of the British Prime Minister of the time”–in other words she was not Cherie Blair, who was a very political figure and much in the news (Le Journal du Dimanche, February 2, 2017).
On February 6, 2017, on France24, François gave a lengthy statement to the press. The video has an English voiceover, but here is what Fillon said about Penelope’s work (translation quoted from the video):
I was questioned for four hours by the police, and Penelope my wife for five hours. We told them everything and answered all their questions. The reality of the facts are as follows. Yes, I employed my wife as an employee. She then worked for my replacement in Parliament, and she again became my parliamentary assistant later on. She occupied this position for fifteen years altogether. And she was paid, on average, on a monthly basis, 4,677 euros net per month–a justifiable salary for a person who is a graduate in arts and in law. Figures of up to a million euros have been bandied about, to create a sensation, forgetting that this amount was a gross amount [as opposed to net income]. Have you ever seen somebody’s accumulated remuneration over fifteen years as –the gross salary is always much greater than the net and my family has been unjustly attacked in this regard.
This job was described as fictitious and a lot of so-called experts have decreed what a parliamentary assistant must do or not do. All elected officials know that this job covers a whole range of tasks. They know that it is not limited and cannot be limited to drawing up laws in the offices of the National Assembly, and they know that this job requires a whole series of minor actions by the parliamentary assistant in the shadows, alone. They may seem banal to some people, but these tasks are indispensable for the functioning of local democracy. During all these years my wife took charge of all those simple but essential tasks. She, with my secretary Sylvie Fourmont, managed my mail, all my mail; she managed my diary. For local events, sports events, cultural events and ceremonies, she marked [my diary]. She worked on my speeches, she represented me in local cultural events, she also received and sent to companies the cvs and requests for jobs sent to me by the inhabitants of Sarthe. She processed any claims or complaints by my constituents when they faced administrative problems, the list of what she did doesn’t stop there.
Her salary was perfectly justified because her work was indispensable to my activities as an elected official. This work she did also for my replacement when I became a government minister. I wanted her to do this because I wanted to preserve the link with my constituency; my wife played this essential role. People say she didn’t have a pass to enter the National Assembly, and that meant she didn’t have a job. A lot of employees who work in the local constituencies don’t have a pass to enter the National Assembly. That doesn’t mean that she didn’t have a job. We know that this is often the case.
I also know a lot of comments have been made on my wife’s statement that she has never been involved in politics [referring to the February 2 broadcast]. A parliamentary assistant does work in the field of politics, but the politics are undertaken by the elected officials.
At the last elections, because she loves local politics, Penelope decided to be elected as a municipal councillor. An interview in English, which she gave many years ago, which has been quoted out of context, explained that she has never been my assistant. Yes, she has never been subordinate to me, she has been first and foremost my work companion, my collaboratrice. Penelope has never claimed to be in the limelight, she has worked discreetly, refusing to speak in my place, as some wives of politicians do, and today she is being accused of seeking the limelight, and I say that her way of working was dignified, so let’s not exaggerate, let’s not judge the words that she said in an interview that do not correspond to thirty years of life. (After about five minutes on Penelope, he went on to explain the work of his children. They were questioned but soon dropped from the case.)
At this point, he had had nearly two weeks to work on this explanation. And this is what he had come up with.
Nabila Ramdani, writing in The Independent on February 2, stressed the central dilemma of the Fillon campaign, as they tried to make their way through the scandal. Penelope, always presented as the nurturing wife and mother, had suddenly to be transformed into a “go-getting political executive.” By this point she should have been all over the media defending her role as her husband’s collaborator. Instead, her appearance at the La Villette rally told a different story: “As the apparently unfazed Fillon made a bombastic speech on stage, she stared forward with tears in her eyes, shaking visibly like a rabbit caught in the headlights” ( The Independent, February 2, 2017).
But then another Penelope appeared, in the pages of Le Journal du Dimanche, March 5, 2017. (All the following excerpts are from this source.) This article, about the nineteen depositions taken to that point in the Fillon affair, was a little disturbing; clearly this judicial record had been leaked to the journalist, Laurent Valdiguié, who described the physical appearance and length of the document (several thousand pages) and included a number of direct quotes from the depositions. (There is no check in place to ensure that the journalist is not, for example, selectively quoting; but I suppose that’s true of, say, historians as well.) The extracts provide intriguing nuances to the outline of the story.
For example the witnesses from the Revue des Deux Mondes revealed some tension behind the scenes. Michel Crépu, the then-editor, stated that he had had no contact with Penelope though he was aware of her title. He had no idea she was being paid until the Canard had told him, and was “stupefied.” She could not have been a real “literary advisor” without going through him; the title was ridiculous anyway. As for her book notes, “I found the choice of the works very appropriate, the writing a bit less so, but finally it could be published.” Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière provided perhaps the most interesting comment about the Fillon dynamics as a couple: “François Fillon approached me . . . (sic) to say that his wife was looking for an activity . . . I said to myself that perhaps she would be useful in the writing of the review and that she could bring an international outlook to the review’s future” (all the way from France to England?) He claimed he had telephoned Crépu about the “book notes,” but didn’t tell him of his thoughts about Penelope’s further role; Crépu was on his way out anyway. Ladreit himself had fixed her salary, which he described as one of the lowest in his Fimalac financial services group. Penelope had written more than two booknotes, but he believed that Crépu had been hostile to her and so she had quit (Le Journal du Dimanche, March 5, 2017).
François Fillon, rather terse, said, “When I left Matignon, my wife was psychologically destabilized, she wanted to open herself up to some other activities.” So he went to ask Ladreit, his friend of thirty years, to provide something for her to do. He thought she had been the victim of a clash between Ladreit and Crépu, and the latter was lying when he said she had only written two reviews. He had seen her work for “days” on the reviews. As for her role as Parliamentary assistant, he said that it was up to the employer what the job was and how it was done–and perhaps that is more of a window into his mind than it might seem. The money was his to dispose of.
Marc Joulaud, the suppléant, currently a member of the European Parliament, backed up the Fillon story. In 2002, when he first entered the National Assembly and hired Penelope, he was only 34 (seven years older than Fillon when he began, five years younger than Macron when he ran for president): “François Fillon defined for me at that time the organization of how we were going to function. For me, a young officeholder, it was a matter of getting a foothold, getting myself known, by supporting myself on Penelope Fillon.” François had fixed the salary she would be paid; he had assumed that it was probably in line with what she had earned from François (in fact it was a good deal more), but he admitted that it had seemed a little high. She had had no fixed duties, but she had taught him about the district when she came home on weekends. The police interrogator asked if he owed his political career to François Fillon. “Bien sûr.” Told that the Fillons had both described him as “timid,” he even agreed to that.
Sylvie Fourmont, François’ longtime secretary, insisted that Penelope had earned her salary: “She tells me to reserve the dates for which her husband should be present. . . . She decides whether he should participate in such or such an event.” Penelope had taught Joulaud “everything, or almost.” Sylvie had not, by the way, considered Joulaud “a real deputy”: he was “too timid.”
Igor Mitrofanoff, another Fillon loyalist and long-term speechwriter, stated that Penelope had been the “eyes and ears” of François in Sarthe. Then why, asked the police interrogator, did she state that she had never worked? “Overall, Penelope has always taken care to not show that she was extremely active on her husband’s behalf, through tact, or modesty, or courtesy in regard to the Sarthois electors.“ So how did that make her different from other spouses? “Penelope perfectly incarnates what the spouse of an important political man should be. She is at the same time informed and active, but with prudence and elegance.”
Penelope defended herself “inch by inch,” according to Valdiguié. Here is where the selective quotation and characterization is at its most dangerous: much of the conversation about Penelope depended on the question of who she was. The 2007 interview tape had made her seem rather lost and dependent, perhaps even ignorant of her husband’s machinations.
But she had apparently pulled herself together for the police interview. Of the Revue, she said that she had been sent two or three books every couple of months, and thus had sent in about 15 book reviews. She had the impression that Crépu resented her, and had decided it would be better to quit. She had been paid by check every month; she had given her global literary advice to Ladreit directly and orally (nothing written). Did she really think that was worth 100,000 euros?
Of her role as a parliamentary assistant, she was paid a salary fixed by her husband. The deposits of her salary had been listed in her bankbook, which she turned over to the police. Thus she had known.
The police investigator asked her to be more precise about what it was that she did: “I opened the mail that came to my home, I triaged it, I reflected upon how one could answer it.” She said she had written memos, small speeches for gatherings, press reviews; she never went to the National Assembly.
Of Joulaud, she said that she knew he wanted to have “weight” in his role: “My husband’s influence remained important in the district whose functioning I understood.” She did not know Marc’s other assistants, even those in the district: “I was in my corner of Sarthe.” Asked if she had written proof, she stated that her communications were “uniquely oral.” Asked about her two full time positions when she worked for the Revue (when combined with her full-time work as assistant), she stated that it had been exhausting, that she had had no rest at that time, neither during the week nor on the weekends.
Natalie Blin had worked for François for several years. She didn’t know Penelope: “I knew who she was–she didn’t know me.” When Penelope had started in 1998, Blin had been forced to go to half-time: “What I know, is that in 1998 my remuneration was reduced by half to permit the remuneration of Mme. Fillon.”
On March 1, 2017, François and Penelope Fillon received official word that they were going to be indicted.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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Bommery, Sylvie. Penelope. Paris: Jean-Claude Lattès, 2017.
Goar, Matthieu and Lemarié, Alexandre. François Fillon: les coulisses d’une défaite. Paris: L’Archipel, 2017.
Stefanini, Patrick, with Carole Barjot. Déflagration. Paris: Robert Laffont, 2017.
