Two women fined in Paris for claiming Brigitte Macron was born a man*
A Paris court has sentenced Natacha Rey and Delphine Jegusse (known online as the medium Amandine Roy) to a fine of 13,500 euros for slander. The women claimed that the wife of 46-year-old French President Emmanuel Macron, 71-year-old Brigitte Macron, was born a man. This is reported by The Guardian.
In 2021, Natasha and Delphine published a four-hour video on YouTube in which they claimed that Brigitte Macron was born a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux (the brother of the First Lady of France), and that she underwent a trans transition in the 1980s*. According to their version, Brigitte's first husband, André-Louis Auzière, did not exist at all, and her children were actually born in the marriage of Jean-Michel and a certain Catherine Auzière (in reality, Cartin is married to Jean-Louis Auzière, André-Louis's uncle). The video collected more than 450 thousand views, but was subsequently deleted.
In early 2022, Brigitte Macron, her brother, and her three children from her first marriage filed a lawsuit. They accused Natacha and Delphine of invading their privacy, but in 2023 the court dismissed the case because the charges were brought under the wrong article. Then the Trogneux family accused Rey and Jegusse of defamation. According to the court's decision, the supporters of the popular conspiracy theory are now obliged to pay 8,000 euros each to Brigitte and another 5,000 euros to her brother Jean-Michel for moral damages. The offenders were also given a suspended fine of 500 euros.
Rumors that Brigitte Macron is a transgender person* appeared back in 2017, after Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France. In December 2021, Natacha Rey, a self-described independent journalist, published an article in which she described her investigation into the French first lady, which the woman had been conducting for several years. Rey assured that she had enough evidence that Brigitte was born in a man's body. Soon, this theory spread widely online.
Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly denied these rumors. In March of this year, he publicly criticized the media for spreading slander about his wife.
