Paris (AFP)

The trial of the Fillon couple in Paris on Monday dissected the activities of Penelope Fillon down to their most anecdotal details in an attempt to determine whether they deserved a salary, but the "evidence" promised by the defense did not have the expected effect.

"The subject is to know what the consistency of Ms. Fillon's job was", summed up the president, Nathalie Gavarino.

Faced with the weakness of material evidence attesting that Mrs. Fillon, 64, was the parliamentary assistant to her deputy husband, the court set out to evoke all the elements likely to characterize this work: real or fictitious?

Tense and teeming, the audience began with the testimony of actors on the ground: prefects, journalists and former collaborators of deputy Fillon.

So this assistant responsible for playing the role of "relay" with the Sarthois at the end of the 1990s. Penelope Fillon was paid for the same missions: is there not "a duplicate", inquires the president ?

"No", replies François Fillon, "because Penelope did not intervene in the urban part of the district, his work was concentrated in the rural cantons".

A central attribution of Penelope Fillon, "mail management" occupied a large part of the debates. This describes a convoluted system by which she gave her husband's secretary "directives" concerning the letters arrived in their mansion, which the secretary passed on to François Fillon's collaborators charged with answering them.

"It was a role of principal," said the former prime minister. A little later, he insisted: "You have to be constantly on the back of employees for the mail to succeed".

But "evidence" long promised by François Fillon and examined one by one did not seem to convince the judges.

Here the letter from a woman on the abortion, there the letter from another concerning her deported parents or the letter from a resident of Gironde ...

In each piece, the president questions the "concrete participation" of Penelope Fillon: "I do not see at all what your intervention is in there", "I cannot understand your role", "a parliamentary assistant does not isn't here to deliver mail "... And the secretary," Did she really need you? "

At the helm, Penelope Fillon gets entangled, François Fillon expertly tries to clarify his answers.

- Funeral eulogy and opening -

The other documents provided by the defense take inventory from La Prévert: an old diary supposed to demonstrate the "density" of the days, articles relating to the presence of Penelope Fillon at an opening, in a retirement home or at the inauguration of an inn ...

Or even these speeches by Mr. Fillon for the departure of a gendarmerie major or the funeral praise of a general councilor, for which Penelope Fillon said to have gathered "details" ...

"These are very old documents found by chance, we do not pretend that this gives an exhaustive account of the activity", justifies his counsel, Pierre Cornut-Gentille.

In Sarthe, only a small circle of relatives knew that Madame Fillon was her husband's assistant. "It was more effective to present her as a wife," says François Fillon.

Over the course of the audience, the former Prime Minister, whose presidential campaign in 2017 had been pulverized by this case, less and less concealed his irritation.

He insisted on the political role played by his wife and on the specificity "of the function of spouse-collaborator" which was then widespread.

"You cannot judge the case before you without taking into account the environment which has been that of the Assembly and the Senate for the past fifty years," he said.

Asked about the ban on these family jobs, decided in the aftermath of this case, he considered "a pity to deprive parliamentarians of a certain freedom in their organization".

But the question remains that of the effectiveness of Ms. Fillon's work. However, repeated one of the prosecutors, he is "more of the social role of an elected partner".

- If at least the trial allowed the prosecution to review its vision of the social role of the wife ... creaked Mr. Fillon.

-It works both ways! "Replied the magistrate.

The trial resumes on Wednesday.

© 2020 AFP