François Fillon is under investigation on suspicion of using public funds to pay his wife for a fake job | Martin Bureau/AFP via Getty Images | Martin Bureau/AFP via Getty Images Fillon: I’m sorry — but I’m staying in the race Embattled French conservative candidate for presidency comes out fighting.

PARIS — François Fillon issued an apology Monday for having employed his family while a member of the French parliament — but insisted he had acted legally and vowed to stay in the race for the presidency.

After a weekend of crisis meetings with his aides, the presidential candidate of French mainstream conservative party Les Républicains spoke at a news conference designed to galvanize his supporters, reassure conservative voters and intimidate internal rivals.

Fillon explained his stumbles in the nearly two weeks since the allegations first surfaced by saying he had “taken a hit to the gut” when satirical weekly Canard Enchaîné reported on January 25 that he had employed his wife Penelope as a parliamentary aide and suggested she had done little work to earn the salary.

The French financial prosecutor then launched a preliminary probe into the allegations and others that followed, notably on his hiring two of his children.

On Monday, Fillon defended his wife and outlined work she had done for him and the many tasks involved. He also confirmed the figures the Canard Enchaîné had published but made them sound smaller by quoting the after-tax amount — a monthly average of €3,677 over a period of 15 years.

“All of this was legal. But was it moral?” Fillon asked rhetorically before saying it was “up to the French” and not the media to decide.

“Like many MPs, I acted according to practices that were legal but which it is clear our compatriots now reject,” he said, adding: “I deeply regret this, and I apologize to the French people.”

Fillon spent some time defending his integrity and suggesting that he would take measures to bring more transparency to French political life. But the main thrust of his remarks was that he was the “only credible candidate” of the French right and his absence from the race would be “inconceivable.”

The allegations against him were meant to distract the French public from “the real challenges,” he said.

Fighting spirit

Fillon’s new-found fighting spirit will help reassure his party that he may indeed be the candidate to contest the election. Most of the options envisioned by worried party bigwigs in the last few days didn’t sound much better than keeping him in the race.

But even as he was speaking, the newspaper Le Monde gave details about the work done by his two children, whom he employed when he was a senator in the years before he became prime minister in 2007.

Le Monde, quoting from sources close to the prosecutor’s investigation, said that his daughter Marie had helped Fillon write a book, and that his son was in fact working on the presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy, whom Fillon supported at the time and who went on to win the presidency.

Fillon didn’t deny the allegations but said that due to the separation of powers, no one had the right to decide what the nature of a parliamentary attaché's job should be.

He also said his lawyers would contest the competence of the French national financial prosecutor to investigate the whole affair, without giving more details.

He reiterated, however, that he would pull out of the race if placed under a formal investigation, adding that he was “convinced” this wouldn’t happen.