A court has ordered two women to pay €8,000 in damages to France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron, after making false claims she was transgender, sparking online rumour-mongering by conspiracy theorists and the far right.
The women had posted a YouTube video in December 2021 alleging the French president’s wife had once been a man named Jean-Michel, an untruth that went viral just weeks before the 2022 presidential election and prompted Macron to file a libel complaint.
Posts spread on social media claiming the first lady, formerly Brigitte Trogneux, had never existed and that her brother Jean-Michel had changed gender and assumed that identity.
A Paris court sentenced Amandine Roy and Natacha Rey on Thursday to pay a total of €8,000 (£6,750) in damages to the president’s wife, and €5,000 to her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux.
They were also given a suspended fine of €500.
Macron, 71, did not attend the trial in June and was not present for the ruling.
Roy, a self-proclaimed spiritual medium, interviewed Rey, a self-described independent journalist, for four hours on her YouTube channel. Rey spoke about the “state lie” and “scam” that she claimed to have uncovered.
The disinformation even spread to the US where Macron was attacked in a now deleted YouTube video before the November midterm elections.
Rey was ill during the trial, but did not manage to have it postponed.
The former US first lady Michelle Obama, the US vice-president and presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, and the New Zealand former prime minister Jacinda Ardern have also been the target of disinformation about their gender or sexuality in efforts to mock or humiliate them.
As news of the ruling came though on Thursday, Macron made her Netflix debut playing herself in the hit series Emily in Paris.
The show’s star, Lily Collins, told Elle magazine the idea came to her and the programme creator Darren Star when they met the first lady at the Elysée Palace in December 2022.
