The trial of 10 people accused of harassing Brigitte Macron after they allegedly made “malicious” comments online, repeating claims that French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife is a man, has opened in Paris.
Neither of the Macrons is expected to attend Monday’s trial, which is scheduled to last two days and is the latest phase in a legal battle happening on both sides of the Atlantic. Separately, the couple is suing American conservative influencer Candace Owens, who released a series examining the claims in February.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said the eight men and two women are accused of spreading “numerous malicious comments” online about the first lady’s gender and “sexuality” and characterizing the 25-year age gap between the Macrons, particularly the ages they were when they met, as “pedophilia.”
Seven of the defendants appeared in court on Monday, while three others were being represented by their lawyers. If convicted, they could be jailed for up to two years and face fines of up to 30,000 pounds for cyber-harassment, which has been a crime distinct from other kinds of harassment in France since 2014.
Some of the posts shared by the defendants, who range in age from 41 to 60, were read by hundreds of thousands of people, the court was told.
One of the two women on trial is Delphine Jegousse, 51, known online as Amandine Roy, who describes herself as a medium, a journalist, and an author. She is considered to have played a central role in amplifying the rumor after she released a four-hour video on her YouTube channel in 2021.
One of the men on trial is Aurélien Poirson-Atlan, 41, who uses the female pseudonym Zoé Sagan on social media. His X account was suspended last year after his name was cited in several judicial investigations.
Other defendants include an elected official, a teacher, and a computer scientist.
Rumors Began in 2017
The Macrons have for years been dogged by rumors that Brigitte was born a male and named Jean-Michel Trogneux, and later transitioned to live as a woman.
Jean-Michel Trogneux is the name of Brigitte’s 80-year-old brother, of whom there are no widely circulated, verified photographs, fueling the online speculation that they are the same person.
While the rumors have circulated online since 2017, when Emmanuel Macron became president, prosecutors said they went viral in 2021, through the accounts of Roy and Poirson-Atlan.
The chief judge said the 10 on trial are all accused of cyberbullying the first lady, which led to “a deterioration of her physical and mental health.”
The claims were further boosted when Owens released an 8-part series, “Becoming Brigitte,” in February, which has been viewed millions of times across various platforms including YouTube, where she has more than 5.4 million subscribers.
Transatlantic Civil Action
The Macrons filed a civil lawsuit against Owens in Delaware in July, stating the claims about the first lady were “vile fabrications” and that to repeat them was “invasive, dehumanizing and deeply unjust.”
The Macrons’ lawyer told the BBC in a podcast on Sept. 17 that the couple plan to present scientific evidence in a court case to prove that Brigitte Macron was not born male, although he declined to give further details of what this might entail.
Owens, an American political commentator and former host of The Daily Wire who has 7.2 million followers on X, said last year she would “stake [her] entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man.”
Controversial Beginnings
The story of how the Macrons met has long been the subject of controversy and public debate. According to official accounts, including the biography “Emmanuel Macron: A Perfect Young Man,” the couple met when Brigitte Auzière was a 39-year-old teacher at a Jesuit school in Amiens and the future president was a 15-year-old student.
When the pair is said to have fallen in love in the early 1990s, Brigitte was married to a banker, Andre-Louis Auziere, with whom she had three children.
Brigitte Macron, 72, has said that she and husband Emmanuel Macron, now 47, did not become a couple until he was over the age of 16. French law did not specify a clear age of consent until 2021, but relations with minors under 15 were generally prohibited, particularly if there was an abuse of authority.
The Paris trial is not the first time the Macrons have taken legal action in France over the online rumors. In September 2024, Brigitte Macron and Jean-Michel Trogneux won a defamation suit against Jegousse and another woman, who were sentenced by a Paris court to fines and damages for spreading the claims online.
A Paris appeals court overturned the ruling in July because the judge accepted that the claims were made in “good faith.” The court did not rule on the veracity of the claims about Brigitte Macron’s biological sex.
Trogneux is appealing that ruling to a higher French court, his attorney told AFP on July 13.
A verdict in the Paris case is not expected at the conclusion of the trial, but will likely be issued at a later date.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
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