10 Found Guilty Of Cyberbullying France’s First Lady, Brigitte Macron
Those convicted had wrongfully claimed that President Macron’s wife is transgender.
Featured Image: Brigitte Macron and President Emmanuel Macron, via ia/Getty Images
Eight men and two women were found guilty of online harassment today, after falsely claiming that Brigitte Macron is transgender and that she had committed “criminal acts of pedophilia” against her now-husband. The court described the comments as “particularly degrading, insulting, and malicious” and said that “repeated publications have had cumulative harmful effects.”
Sentences ranged from a six-month jail sentence to an eight-month suspended jail sentence for the sole individual who expressed remorse. All are required to attend online harassment awareness training. The defendants, aged 41 to 65, were also fined about $12,000, to be awarded to Brigitte Macron. Five are barred from using X for six months, the platform on which they posted photos and messages. Three were tried in absentia.
This case is separate from the trial against right-wing American podcaster, Candace Owens, for which Brigitte Macron provided “scientific and photographic evidence” that she is a woman. In line with a popular conspiracy theory (also espoused by Owens), the posts addressed at the trial of the ten involved accusations that Brigitte Macron was born a boy called Jean-Michel Trogneux, which is actually the name of her older brother. The conspiracy suggests that Brigitte is, in fact, Jean-Michel.
In some posts, the Macrons’ relationship was categorized as one of pedophilia. Brigitte Macron, now 72, met Emmanuel Macron when he was her 15-year-old drama student (an age gap of 24 years). Accounts indicate they developed a romantic relationship later and married in 2007. In court, the defendants mostly claimed no wrongdoing with regard to their banter, saying they had been joking or satirical, or that they thought they were engaged in a legitimate debate.
The Macrons have publicly expressed that they’ve engaged in the lawsuits to combat misinformation generally. They pointed to Owens’ campaign of defamation as plainly designed to harass and garner notoriety. In addition to the lawsuit against Candace Owens filed in Delaware, the couple and their relatives have undertaken a total of five separate lawsuits against people who have spread lies about the family.
During a trial last October, Brigitte Macron’s daughter Tiphaine Auzière told the court that the conspiracy theories had made it “impossible” for her mother “to have a normal life.”
As previously reported by GO, the origins of the transphobic conspiracy theory can be traced to 2017, when blogger Natacha Rey claimed that Brigitte was actually her own brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux and that she had undergone gender reassignment surgery; later, Rey made a four-hour video with self-proclaimed fortune teller, Amandine Roy (real name, Delphine Jegousse), spreading the unsubstantiated allegations.
Rey and Roy were found guilty of slander in 2024; the conviction was overturned on appeal last July, and will likely get in front of France’s highest appeals court this year. Today, that same instigator, Delphine Jégousse, 51, received another guilty verdict and a six-month suspended sentence, along with art gallery owner, Bertrand Scholler, age 56. Aurélien Poirson-Atlan, 41, who had tens of thousands of followers, received an eight-month suspended sentence.
Others on trial included a teacher, a computer scientist, and an elected official.
Brigitte Macron didn’t attend the trial. On TF1 national television on Sunday, she said that she launched the lawsuit to “set an example” in the fight against harassment.
