French First Lady Brigitte Macron has been awarded damages over a viral false claim that she is a transgender man named Jean-Michel.
A Paris court on Thursday ordered two women to pay 6,750 pounds in damages to the 71-year-old man after making the allegations that sparked online rumours from conspiracy theorists and the far right.
Macron filed a defamation complaint against the two women — self-proclaimed spiritual medium Amandine Roy and conspiracy theorist Natacha Rey — who posted a YouTube video in December 2021 alleging that she had once been a man named “Jean-Michel.”
The claim went viral just weeks before the 2022 presidential election.
Posts circulated on social media claiming that the first lady, formerly Brigitte Trogneux, had never existed and that her brother Jean-Michel had changed gender and assumed that identity.
French First Lady Brigitte Macron has been awarded £6,750 in damages over the viral false claim that she is a transgender man
Self-proclaimed spiritual medium Amandine Roy posted a four-hour video on YouTube that allows a conspiracy theorist to make false claims.
Conspiracy theorist Natacha Rey (pictured) claimed that Brigitte Macron was born a man
A Paris court ordered the two defendants to pay a total of 6,750 pounds in damages to the president’s wife and 4,200 pounds to his brother Jean-Michel Trogneux. Macron had initially demanded 8,400 pounds in damages.
The couple were also given a suspended fine of £420.
Macron and her husband, French President Emmanuel Macron, did not attend the trial in June and were not present for the verdict.
The medium, Roy, 49, had interviewed Rey for hours on her YouTube channel where she ranted about the “state lie” and “scam” she claimed to have uncovered.
Rey was “desperate to share her work,” said Roy, who simply “gave in to her request.”
Despite this claim of having caved to Rey, Roy said the plotter “had spent three years investigating, it’s not like she pulled it out of a hat.”
“I regret that this has not been picked up and investigated by the mainstream media,” said Roy, who said he could not “hide” such a “serious” issue.
The misinformation even spread to the United States, where Brigitte Macron was attacked in a now-deleted YouTube video ahead of the November election.
“The prejudice is enormous and has erupted everywhere,” declared Brigitte Macron’s lawyer, Jean Ennochi.
Rey was ill during the trial, but was unable to postpone it.
In March, the French president expressed anger and frustration at continued speculation about his wife, whom he married in 2007.
Macron and her husband, French President Emmanuel Macron, did not attend the trial in June and were not present for the ruling.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte Macron enjoy the spectacle during the Closing Ceremony on day eleven of the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympic Games at the Stade de France on September 8, 2024
On Thursday, Brigitte Macron made her Netflix debut playing herself in the hit series ‘Emily in Paris’
“The worst thing is the false information and the invented scenarios,” he said.
“People end up believing them and they disturb you, even in your privacy.”
She said the transgender claims about Macron were typical of the misogynistic online attacks that women have to endure every day.
Details of the bizarre case were revived after her own daughter spoke publicly about the allegations for the first time.
Tiphaine Auzière, 40, told Paris Match magazine: “I am concerned about the social level when I hear what is circulating on social media about my mother being a man.”
Auzière also spoke of how hurt she was after discovering, aged 10, that her teacher mother was seeing the teenage Emmanuel Macron.
The future politician was just 15 years old when he began a relationship with Brigitte Auzière, then married and a mother of three children, who at the time was 40 years old and taught drama at La Providence secondary school in Amiens, in northern France.
Former US First Lady Michelle Obama, US Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris and former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have also been targeted with misinformation about their gender or sexuality in an attempt to mock or humiliate them.
Also on Thursday, Brigitte Macron made her Netflix debut playing herself in the hit series ‘Emily in Paris.’
The show’s star, Lily Collins, told Elle magazine that the idea came to her and the show’s creator, Darren Star, when they met the first lady at the Élysée Palace in December 2022.