Brigitte Macron gets early court date over ‘born a man’ conspiracy
BRIGITTE MACRON is taking conspiracy theorists to court a year earlier than planned after the false claim they made that she was born male garnered fresh attention in the US recently with a video posted by a pro-trump influencer.
Originally scheduled to be held in March 2025, the defamation hearing has been rescheduled for June 19 at the request of the French first lady’s lawyer.
Jean Ennochi told the weekly French news magazine Le Nouvel Obs that the baseless rumours have regained momentum after they were peddled by the American conservative commentator and Trump supporter Candace Owens last month.
He said that following Ms Owens’ comments: “I felt that the harm to my client was increasing day by day.”
The rumours around Mrs Macron’s gender began in 2021 when Natacha Rey and Amandine Roy, who describe themselves as a freelance journalist and clairvoyant, respectively, appeared in a four-hour Youtube video falsely claiming that Mrs Macron was born Jean
Michel Trogneux and changed gender. Jean-michel Trogneux is in fact the name of Mrs Macron’s brother.
The video went viral with the rumours continuing to be pushed by far-right extremists, transphobic groups and conspiracy theorists in France.
They have had little impact internationally but after Ms Owens repeated the conspiracy theory on Youtube, her clip got more than a million views.
“After looking into this, I would stake my entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man,” said Ms Owens.
“Any journalist or publication that is trying to dismiss this plausibility is immediately identifiable as establishment,” Ms Owens wrote on Twitter.
Among the other claims Ms Rey and Ms Roy have made about Mrs Macron is that her first husband, André-louis Auzière, with whom she has three children, had never actually existed.
Ms Rey claimed that Jean-louis Auzière had forged documents to hide that his wife had given birth to all of Brigitte’s three children, including Tiphaine Auzière, The Daily Mail reported.
Last summer the pair were convicted of defamation over the story after a complaint was made against them by a couple in Calvados in France.
Jean-louis Auzière told the court: “I worked with Brigitte until the end of the 1980s, I can confirm to you that she is not a man.”
The judge found Roy and Rey guilty of libel and fined them the equivalent of £1,700 each. However, the women appealed and had their fines dropped to £850 for Rey and £400 for Roy.
In a phone call with Le Nouvel Obs, Ms Rey said she would not be able to appear in court for the case in June because she has been weakened by cancer.