A court in Paris has fined two women and ordered them to pay €8,000 ($8,800) in damages to the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, for claiming that she was born a man.
The rumors began in 2021, when self-proclaimed ‘spiritual medium’ Amandine Roy interviewed independent journalist Natacha Rey, who claimed that Brigitte Macron was born a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux.
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Video clips of the interview circulated online, and by that December the hashtag #JeanMichelTrogneux was drawing national attention.
Mrs. Macron, whose maiden name is Brigitte Marie-Claude Trogneux, sued the two women the following year, accusing them of defamation and violating her privacy.
Roy and Rey were given suspended fines of €500 on Thursday and ordered to pay €8,000 in compensation to Mrs. Macron. They were also ordered to pay €5,000 to her brother, the actual Jean-Michel Trogneux.
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During her interview with Roy, Rey claimed that she had spent three years researching Brigitte Macron’s supposed secret, and that evidence of her gender transition was kept in “a sealed envelope deposited with a lawyer whose name is well known.” This information would be made public if France introduced compulsory Covid-19 vaccination, Rey asserted.
“The worst thing” about such “false information and fabricated scenarios,” President Emmanuel Macron told reporters last year, is that “people end up believing them.”
Emmanuel Macron has previously faced questions about his relationship with his wife, who is 24 years his senior and his former teacher. The French president fended off accusations of homosexuality while on the campaign trail in 2017, calling them “first and foremost unpleasant for Brigitte.”