How a clairvoyant sparked ridiculous rumour that Brigitte Macron was born a man which social media fanatics believe IS true... as the French president's wife is once again forced to take legal action

Daily Mail​

9 hours ago

As jets coloured the skies over the Champs-Elysees with trails of red, white and blue, Brigitte Macron stood at her husband's side, right hand clasping left, and stared out across the Bastille Day parade.
Eight years as the first lady of France have taught Ms Macron the expectations of the job--and how to manage her image in public. Scrutiny follows how she looks, what she says and how she interacts with her husband when in the presidential spotlight.
In her first formal post-election interview in 2017, she gently dismissed a question asking how she felt, as a feminist, about the incessant focus on her clothes: 'If it's good for French fashion, why not?'
But it is difficult to imagine that Ms Macron, despite her careful presentation, was entirely unaffected by the libel case simmering in the background of Monday's Bastille Day parade. Scrutiny of one's public image is one thing. It is entirely another to question who they are.
In the courts, Ms Macron has parried baseless claims by blogger Natacha Rey and self-proclaimed spiritual medium Amandine Roy that she was born a man and transitioned before marrying her husband.
The pair were ordered to pay thousands of euros in damages last year, after their claims went viral and gained traction among conspiracy theorists in the United States. But last week, the Paris appeals court overturned earlier convictions.
Dressed all in white for the Bastille Day celebrations on Monday, Brigitte Macron, undeterred, stood tall at her husband's side as her lawyer revealed she would fight the claims in court once more.
It was three days before Christmas Day, 2021. Most of France was winding down for the holidays. But Mr and Ms Macron were otherwise preoccupied.
Her lawyer announced that she would be launching legal action over the spread of false claims that she is a transgender woman who was born a man.
Jean Ennochi, the lawyer, told Reuters that several individuals were in focus as the claims gained new momentum following the publication of a video on social media on December 10.
The four-hour interview saw a journalist and a self-described medium discuss so-called 'evidence' surrounding claims Ms Macron was born Jean-Michel Trogneux.
They spoke about surgeries she had allegedly undergone, aired pictures of her family, and scrutinised personal information belonging to her brother, the real Jean-Michel Trogneux.
Ms Rey spoke about the 'state lie' and 'scam' they had uncovered, that the first lady of France had transitioned to become Brigitte and then married the president.
She had not. But it did not stop the video being watched nearly 400,000 times and shared across social media as Mr Macron was gearing up for the 2022 presidential election.
Ms Macron's office declined to comment at the time. She broke her silence, instead, three weeks later, after Christmas, as the world started to return to normal.
Speaking to French radio, she said: 'If I do not address it, if I do not do anything after four years of working against bullying, I will not be listened to.'
Brigitte Macron with her daughter Tiphaine Auziere, who spoke out about her mother's history in an interview with Paris Match
Speaking on the RTL radio station - incidentally on her priority of tackling bullying in schools - was the first real opportunity to address the falsehood.
'There are three different elements to this story,' the first lady outlined in her comments to the nation.
'It starts with the originators of the story. In this case, they were women who apparently have been pursuing me for a long time – I don't know, I don't go there [on social networks].
'Then, there are those who share and exaggerate what is being claimed.
'And finally there are, of course, 'the hosts,' she said, referring to the social media platforms themselves.'
In the first camp was Natacha Rey, a journalist who claimed she was investigating Macron. On her Facebook page, there were posts implying that Ms Macron was a man dating back to March 2021.
Matters came to a head in September of that year when she co-authored an ' investigation ' with Xavier Poussard for the far-right newsletter Faits et Documents (facts and documents), which he edited.
The New Statesman observed at the time: 'Its pages, which do not draw heavily on either facts or documents, include one section on 'lobbies', which criticises the supposed influence of various interest groups, such as Jews, Freemasons and homosexuals.'
The story existed for a few months before Ms Rey took it to medium Delphine Jégousse, alias Amandine Roy, for a four-hour interview.
In the video published that December, she claimed to have evidence of the first lady's transition.
She referred to an old Trogneux family photograph, in which Brigitte is seen as a young girl sitting on her mother's knee.
Ms Rey said the girl was probably Nathalie Farcy, who was orphaned when Brigitte's older sister Maryvonne was killed in a car crash.
She identified a boy in a checked shirt as Brigitte, not her brother Jean-Michel, claiming the child later underwent a sex change operation in the 1980s.
The theory falls short; the birth of Brigitte Macron was recorded on April 13, 1953, in the Courrier Picard daily newspaper of the Picardy region of France.
A notice reads: 'Anne-Marie, Jean-Claude, Maryvonne, Monique and Jean-Michel Trogneux have great joy in announcing the arrival of their little sister, Brigitte.'
But the video was seen hundreds of thousands of times before being deleted, and the claims repeated tens of thousands of times on Twitter.
At the same time, Ms Rey created a website with a contact form to address the presidency directly, and called for the bulk sending of messages to 'question Brigitte Macron en masse' about 'her brother Jean-Michel'.
Things moved quickly. Within a month of Ms Macron's radio appearance, the pair were hauled in front of the civil courts for invasion of privacy. A criminal complaint for defamation was also filed by Ms Macron and her brother.
Candace Owens on Tuesday said that she would be willing to bet her career that French President Emmanuel Macron's wife was born a man.
The two women were ultimately found to have defamed Ms Macron by the Paris Criminal Court in September 2024, handed a suspended fine of €500 and ordered to pay a total of €8,000 in damages to Brigitte Macron and €5,000 to her brother.
It had been a long wait for the verdict from the trial in June 2023. Ms Macron was not present for the decision.
But a verdict was not enough to stop the rumours spreading and taking new form.
Originally shared in the United States on sites like notorious disinformation hub 4chan, the claim snowballed when figures 'with very large audiences gave it visibility', doctoral researcher Sophie Chauvet, specialising in audience metrics, told the French AFP news agency.
Prominent conservative commentator Candace Owens attacked the first lady in a now-deleted YouTube video posted in March last year, propagating the false claim.
She cited a 'thorough investigation' by Rey, published in Faits et Documents in 2021.
Why now? Emmanuelle Anizon, a journalist at the French weekly L'Obs, told AFP that the difference was that Xavier Poussard had started translating the newsletter's articles at the end of 2023.
Anizon, who spoke to Poussard and his associate Aurelien Poirson who advised on the translation, explained that it was no accident that the US far right had taken up the false claim ahead of the November US elections.
'It was their dream to export this rumour across the Atlantic,' she said.
Again, the rumour exploded online. Poussard published a 338-page book called Devenir Brigitte ('Becoming Brigitte') to run alongside it.
The falsehoods fail to go away. Last summer, Reuters reported on a photograph of a young male model at a 2009 photoshoot in Russia, posted on social media to more speculation that the boy was, again, Ms Macron.
This had no bearing on the original theory. But it did not seem to matter. Reuters contacted the photographer and revealed the image, of a male model in Moscow, not Ms Macron, had been altered.
In February of this year, a cropped photo of the Trogneux family circulated on social media, prompting fact-checkers at Full Fact to resurrect the story of how the story emerged, was shot down and led to a successful defamation verdict.
'False and misleading posts like this can spread quickly online, so it's important to consider whether what you are seeing comes from a verifiable and reliable source before sharing on social media,' they advised.
Nearly a year has passed, but the fiction still lingers over both the presidency and Ms Macron's personal life.
On Thursday, the Paris appeals court overturned earlier convictions against the two women for spreading the false claim about Brigitte Macron.
Judges sitting at the Paris Appeal Court ruled that Amandine Roy, now 53, and Natacha Rey, 49 and a blogger, had every legal right to make the allegations.
Both had claimed they were subjected to 'intimidation by the authorities' as 'ultra protected' members of the Paris establishment tried to cover up a 'state secret'.
Lawyers for Ms Macron, 72, in turn indicated that she was 'devastated' by the development, and would be taking the case to France's Cassation Court.
As her lawyer relayed her intentions to the press on Monday, Ms Macron stood before the nation for Bastille Day and watched as jets left trails of red, white and blue overhead.
She stood at her husband's side, right hand clasping left, and it was impossible to know what she was thinking.