A Paris court convicted 10 people for online harassment targeting Brigitte Macron
A teacher and a publicist were among those found guilty of deliberately posting or spreading false allegations that France’s first lady is a man.
A Paris court has convicted 10 people of harassing France’s First Lady, Brigitte Macron, online. They had posted or reposted false claims on social media that she is a man.
On Monday, eight men and two women, aged 41 to 60, including a school sports teacher, an art gallery owner, and a publicist, received sentences ranging from mandatory courses on understanding online harassment to eight-month suspended prison sentences.
One man, a property developer who was absent from the trial, was sentenced to six months in prison.
Some were also banned from accessing the social media platforms on which they had posted or reposted the comments.
All were found guilty of making or sharing malicious comments about Brigitte Macron’s gender and sexuality, claiming she was born a man. For some, this also included equating the age difference between her and her husband, French President Emmanuel Macron, to pedophilia.
The Paris trial is the latest phase in Macron’s legal battle on both sides of the Atlantic against the false claim that Brigitte Macron is a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux.
Macron has also filed a defamation lawsuit in the US against conservative podcaster Candace Owens for amplifying and repeating the claim.
The US lawsuit states that the allegation that Brigitte Macron is a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux is entirely false and that Trogneux is actually Brigitte Macron’s older brother.
The 80-year-old Trogneux lives in the northern French city of Amiens, where he and Brigitte and their siblings grew up in a family known for its chocolate business.
The false theories about Brigitte Macron’s gender spread because Macron’s relationship has long been a topic of online commentary.
Brigitte Macron, who is 24 years older than her husband, first met Emmanuel Macron when she was his French teacher at his Jesuit secondary school in Amiens, where she directed him in a school play.
Macron’s US lawsuit against Owens states, “Through the school’s theater program, a deep intellectual connection developed between President Macron and Mrs. Macron.” It further states: “At all times, the teacher-student relationship between Mrs. Macron and President Macron remained within the bounds of the law.”
Brigitte Macron, who has three children from her first marriage, divorced in 2006 and married Emmanuel Macron the following year, when he was 30 years old.
Brigitte Macron’s daughter, 41-year-old lawyer Tiphaine Auzière, told the court that the false claims that the French First Lady was born male had damaged her mother’s quality of life, causing her daily anxiety about what she wears and how she stands.
Ozieres, one of Brigitte Macron’s three children from her first marriage, said her mother had been affected by social media posts, which had “damaged her health” and “ruined her quality of life.”
She said: “There isn’t a day or a week that goes by without someone talking to her about this… The hardest thing for her is the impact on her family… Her grandchildren hear what’s being said: ‘Your grandmother is lying,’ or ‘Your grandmother is a man.’ It affects them a lot. She doesn’t know how to stop it… She wasn’t elected, she didn’t ask for any of this, and she’s constantly subjected to these attacks. I—as a daughter, a woman, and a mother—wouldn’t wish her life on anyone.”
Brigitte Macron told TF1 the night before the ruling that she would continue to fight. She said, “People are playing with my family and claiming that I am a man.”
She said those harassing her online had ignored irrefutable proof of her gender. She said, “A birth certificate is not nothing. It’s a father or a mother who declares their child, who states who he or she is.”
She added that she wanted to be a role model for young people against bullying: “I want to help teenagers fight against bullying, and if I don’t set an example, it will be difficult.”
