The discreet lunch that threatens Hollande's top aide and former premier François Fillon

ItIt was supposed to be a friendly, informal lunch between two former government colleagues who knew each other well. But their chat in a private room at the upmarket Pavillon Ledoyen close to the Elysée Palace threatens to torpedo former right-wing prime minister François Fillon's presidential hopes for 2017 and weaken the position of President François Hollande's chief of staff Jean-Pierre Jouyet. It has already provoked yet another embarrassing affair at the heart of the Elysée itself.

The bitter controversy broke last week with the publication on Thursday of the book Sarko s'est tuer (1) by two Le Monde journalists. It claims that when Jouyet, Hollande's close personal friend, but who also briefly served as a minister under Fillon, lunched with the former prime minister on June 24th, the latter asked him to speed up a legal probe into the ex-president. This was over the question of why the right-wing UMP party had agreed to pay Nicolas Sarkozy's fine for overspending in his 2012 election campaign. At the time the party and the former president were also embroiled in the ongoing Bygmalion affair over election funding.

According to the book Fillon, who was prime minister under Sarkozy from 2007 to 2012, said to Jouyet: “Strike fast, strike fast! You know full well, Jean-Pierre, that if you don't strike fast you are going to let him return. So act!” At the time Sarkozy was still preparing his political comeback and potential bid to be the UMP candidate for the 2017 presidential elections, a position that Fillon also covets. Relations between the two men have been strained since they left office in 2012. Fillon is also alleged to have told Jouyet that Sarkozy was guilty of “misuse of company funds” over the UMP's payment of his fine.
Jouyet told the journalists: “When Filllon said that to me, I said, look, yes, we could perhaps simply highlight it...[editor's note, in other words point it out to the judicial authorities]. But François Hollande said to me: 'No, no, we don't get involved.'” And indeed, instead of the prosecution authorities fast-tracking the case as could have occurred, a preliminary investigation was opened on July 2nd followed by the announcement on October 6th, 2014, of a full investigation into the UMP's payment of Sarkozy's fines, for “breach of trust”, “complicity” in breach of trust and “receiving the proceeds” of that breach of trust.

Holalnde's chief of staff made his comments to the two journalists, Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, during an interview on September 20th. But when on Thursday November 6th extracts of the book were published, Jouyet denied that he and Fillon had discussed the issue of the Sarkozy/UMP fine payment with Fillon. Jouyet, whose formal title is secretary-general of the Elysée, told news agency AFP that the former prime minister “had not asked for any intervention whatsoever, something which in any case would be unimaginable”. At the same time he sent a text message to Fillon – who had also already denied any such conversation - expressing his “apologies and regrets” for these “rumblings from the corridors of the Elysée”.

But on Sunday November 9th, after the journalists – who have regular access to the Elysée as they are writing a book about Hollande's five-year term – revealed they had a tape of their interview with Jouyet, the president’s chief of staff abruptly changed his story. In a written statement to AFP Jouyet implicitly admitted he had not told the truth in his initial statement and said he and Fillon had indeed discussed the Bygmalion affair. He went on: “[Fillon] also raised the question of the regularity of the penalties paid by the UMP for Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential campaign having exceeded authorised spending. I let [Fillon] know that the Republic's presidency could do nothing concerning this procedure that was under the authority of the justice system.”

Within a few hours of this admission, François Fillon went on the main evening television news bulletin of TF1 to mount a vigorous defence of his version of events at that lunch. “We did not speak of the penalties [paid by the UMP] that's a lie,” he said. On the issue of seeking to influence legal proceedings against his former boss, Fillon said: “It's an invention, it's defamatory. I would never get involved in such a manoeuvre.” The former prime minister called on the tape to be made public and promised to fight back. Fillon has already announced defamation proceedings against the Le Monde journalists and is now threatening the same against Jouyet.
Both Jouyet and Fillon are damaged by this affair, though the former prime minister has one advantage over his former minister – the conversation at the lunch was not recorded. So he can deny the nature of the conversation with Jouyet because there is no way of proving what was or what was not said there. Indeed, Fillon has an additional advantage, as a third man was present at the lunch – Fillon's former deputy chief of staff as prime minister Antoine Gosset-Grainville who is also a friend of Jouyet's. He has backed his ex-boss's version of events. “François Fillon never asked for nor even mentioned any intervention by the Elysée,” said Gosset-Grainville. Jouyet, meanwhile, has now been caught changing his story. And no one can be sure that he did not indulge in a little boasting in front of two journalists he thought he could trust.
Overall, the main impression emerging so far from this affair is of yet another tale of grubby politics and intrigue of the type that the worn-out Fifth Republic has seen many times, under former socialist president François Mitterrand as well as under right-wing heads of state Valérie Giscard d'Estaing, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. On Sunday evening the president of the far-right Front National, Marine Le Pen, sought to make political capital out of the affair dismissing it on television as: “Dirty tricks, manoeuvrings and lies, which have been the foundation of political life in our country for many years, with the same methods from Right and Left.”

Though the Elysée is badly damaged by the affair, it has tried to claim that Jean-Pierre Jouyet's change of story simply reflects the fact that he had expressed himself clumsily in his first statement. But there is a risk that the media pressure on Jouyet will grow and that Hollande may have to consider letting his old friend go. “It's a Brazilian TV soap opera this presidency! Jouyet is dead I think,” one “astonished” socialist MP told Mediapart. “Jouyet will hold on for three days, maximum,” a member of the government was quoted as saying by Le Parisien.
Another socialist MP told Mediapart they could not imagine how Jouyet could have said so much in front of the Le Monde journalists. “It's all very strange. I know that Jouyet thinks he is unassailable and can do anything, but even so...it's one act of impudence too many.” One irony of the story is that in all the 30 years that Jouyet and Hollande have been friends – they were in the same year at the elite École Nationale d'Administration (ENA) – they have only fallen out once. And that was when Jouyet joined Fillon's ministerial team just after Sarkozy's election in 2007.

As for Nicolas Sarkozy himself, the affair fits perfectly into the narrative that he and his entourage have sought to construct over the last two years, that the former president has been the victim of a dirty tricks campaign. Or, as Sarkozy's former interior minister and one-time chief of staff Claude Guéant put it, that trying to “topple” the former head of state has become a “state obsession”. This kind of rhetoric is lapped up by Sarkozy activists who cling to the belief that there is a state conspiracy and an attempt to use the legal system to bring down their man, just as he tries to become the leader of the UMP and launch his bid for the presidency in 2017. “This reinforces our support,” an activist told Mediapart at a rally held by Sarkozy in Paris on Friday as this latest drama began to unfold. “We are united behind him.”

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1 'Sarko s'est tuer', by Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, both journalists at Le Monde, is published by Stock. The title means 'Sarkozy killed himself'' referring to the authors' claims that the kind of intrigues and practices carried out by the former president have rebounded on him. The deliberately ungrammatical title – it should read 'Sarkozy s'est tué' - is an allusion to an infamous criminal case involving a gardener Omar Raddad who in 1991 was accused of murdering his elderly employer Ghislaine Marchal. Before she died she is said to have written in blood 'OMAR M'A TUER' ('Omar killed me'), which is incorrect French. The correct French would have been 'OMAR M'A TUÉE'. The defence claimed that an educated woman such as Marchal would not have written it incorrectly. Raddad was later convicted but saw his sentence commuted by president Jacques Chirac. He is still fighting to get his original conviction overturned. The Le Monde journalists used a similar title for an earlier book – 'Sarko m'a tuer'.

Fillon supporters cry foul

Senior figures on the Right are very aware of the support that Sarkozy still commands among grassroots sections of the UMP, so they have always been careful not to to attack him head-on. In the last two years the only such figure to have dared to criticise the former head of state is his former prime minister François Fillon. That, however, has not helped him. Even the revelation of the Bygmalion affair, which showed Fillon was right in late 2012 when he attacked the machinations of his then-rival for the party leadership Jean-François Copé, did not change matters. For in the eyes of hard-core supporters Fillon had become a “traitor”. The enmity between Fillon and Sarkozy has been an open secret, and this was why no one was really surprised at the comments attributed to him by Jean-Pierre Jouyet at the now infamous lunch in June.

Some of Sarkozy's supporters have wasted little time in using the opportunity to try and bury the former premier's presidential hopes once and for all. The Copé loyalist Sébastien Huygue told BFM-TV that Fillon should step down as one of the three temporary vice-presidents of the UMP. “The masks are falling,” he wrote on Twitter on Sunday, with the hashtag #Fillon asked the Elysée to stop @NicolasSarkozy's return. But after Fillon's appearance on TF1 there was a change of tone. “#Jouyetgate, the problem is no longer knowing what #Fillon said or not but that there are lies and manipulation at the Elysée,” wrote Huygues, using the hashtag 'State scandal'.

Another Copé loyalist, MP Michèle Tabarot, was more overt in her attempts to settle scores with the Fillon camp (see Tweet below), asking: “According to @LeMonde, @FrancoisFillon asked the government to 'get rid of' @NicolasSarkozy, what does @ECiotti think about that?” This was a reference to Fillon loyalist and MP Éric Ciotti. More senior figures such as Henri Guaino MP, Sarkozy's former adviser, and mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi have confined themselves to calling on François Fillon to explain himself.

That was precisely what Fillon did first in the newspaper the Journal du Dimanche and then on TF1. In the newspaper interview Fillon highlighted the improbable nature of the plot of which he was accused. “Who can imagine that I would go to lunch at one of the most visible restaurants on the Champs-Élysées with the secretary-general of the Elysée and my former deputy chief of staff to speak about the UMP's legal problems? Who can imagine such a scenario?” But the former prime minister also played up his loyalty to the UMP movement and played down his differences with Sarkozy. Though he had “divergent views on the manner in which to help our country to recover” from the former president, he said he was neither his “opponent” nor his “enemy”. Fillon added: “We governed the country together, we have mutual respect for each other. One would never use methods like those”

By accusing the chief of staff at the Elysée of having lied, Fillon has now changed the affair from “FillonGate” into “JouyetGate”. One of the former premier's advisers, contacted by Mediapart, spoke of a political “machination by Jean-Pierre Jouyet", which was aimed both at “messing things up on the Right” and “giving the idea that a virtuous Left doesn't interfere with the justice system”.

Fillon himself said as much on TF1 when he spoke of the implications of Jouyet's words. “It means that at the top of the state there are people who are perhaps looking to destabilise a senior figure in the opposition, to eliminate a probable candidate at the presidential election, who are looking to divide the main opposition party, who are looking to hit Nicolas Sarkozy and François Fillon with the same shot,” he declared.

His supporters Éric Ciotti and Jean Leonetti picked up a similar theme on Twitter (see below). Ciotti claimed: “The Jouyet affair smacks of machinations by the Elysée's dirty tricks unit against Nicolas Sarkozy and François Fillon.” As for Leonetti he claimed: “The journalists thought they were revealing a 'Fillon scandal', they have uncovered a 'Jouyet scandal' and a 'state scandal'. The shot missed its target.”

As for the substance of the alleged conversation between Jouyet and Fillon at that lunch, namely the fines paid by the UMP on behalf of Sarkozy, there is no doubt that Fillon had been interested in the issue since June when he had become an interim co-president of the party. Both he and another of the co-presidents, Alain Juppé, were worried that the party faced legal sanctions if it had illegally paid a fine that Sarkozy himself should have settled. As Mediapart revealed, both men wanted the auditors who were in charge of approving the UMP's accounts to be transparent with the party funding regulatory body the Commission des Financements Politiques and to talk about the ongoing legal debate about the 364,000 euros the party had paid in fines. But it was only on June 30th, when the party accounts were finally filed, that the auditors raised the issue with the prosecution authorities. This then led to the preliminary probe on July 2nd which was made a full investigation on October 6th.

“It was a discussion we had inside the party,” Fillon said on TF1, adding that he had since left it to the judicial process, which was “now looking into it”, to deal with the matter. For François Fillon to have brought up the subject of the party's funding and financial woes at the lunch at a time when the political world was speaking of little else would hardly be surprising. The former prime minister himself has not really denied that. But he insists that any suggestions that he asked for pressure to be put on the judicial system are nothing but “lies”.
The former prime minister considers the affair has now become a “state scandal” and seems determined not to let himself be blown away by events. His decision to go on TF1 to explain himself is an example of Nicolas Sarkozy's mantra that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Sarkozy recently said that the scandals surrounding him had “greatly reinforced my determination” and that “if they had wanted me to stay quietly in my box they [editor's note, the people he blames for stirring up the scandals] shouldn't have acted like that”. In Fillon's case he said on TF1: “Those who think that these accusations are going to weaken me or discourage me are deceived. On the contrary, they will redouble my determination because I am convinced that this country's way of doing things has to be changed profoundly.”

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• The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter