Brigitte Macron: France’s First Lady wins damages over online claims she was once a man
Brigitte Macron was awarded damages yesterday over false online claims that she was born a man.
Self-proclaimed medium Amandine Roy, 52, and conspiracy theorist Natacha Rey, 48, were ordered to pay £6,750 to France’s First Lady.
Mrs Macron, 71, filed a libel complaint against the women who appeared in a YouTube video in 2021 alleging she had once been a man called Jean-Michel.
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Social media posts claimed that the former Brigitte Trogneux had never existed and that her brother Jean-Michel had changed gender and assumed that identity. A Paris court sentenced the two defendants to pay the damages plus £4,200 to Brigitte’s brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux.
Neither Mrs Macron nor her husband, the French president Emmanuel, attended the trial in June and were absent for the ruling.
Roy had interviewed Rey 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 had merely ‘acquiesced to her request’.
In March, Mr Macron, 46, expressed his anger at the continual speculation about his wife, whom he married in 2007. ‘The worst thing is the false information and fabricated scenarios,’ he said.
‘People eventually believe them and disturb you, even in your intimacy.’
