Ten people sit on the bench for online harassment of the first lady of , , as the legal battle over false claims that the president’s wife was born a man named Jean-Michel Tronier enters the final stretch.
The trial in Paris comes against the backdrop of a defamation lawsuit filed in the US by French President Emmanuel Macron himself and his wife in late July against rumors circulating online that Brigitte Macron was born a man.
What is the trial about?
The online harassment trial is separate from the US case and relates to a complaint filed by Brigitte Macron in 2024. Ten defendants – eight men and two women, aged 41 to 60 – will stand trial in a Paris criminal court accused of online harassment aimed at Brigitte Macron. If convicted, they face up to two years in prison.
The defendants, who deny the charges, are accused of making a series of malicious comments about Brigitte Macron’s gender and sexuality, some of which even equated her age difference with her husband to “pedophilia”, according to prosecutors.
France’s first lady filed a complaint in Paris in August 2024, which led to an investigation into online harassment and arrests in December 2024 and February 2025.
Who are on trial?
Among the defendants is 41-year-old Aurelien Poirson-Atlan, a columnist known on social media as “Zoé Sagan” and often linked to conspiracy theory circles.
The defendants also include a woman who has been sued for defamation by Brigitte Macron in 2022, 51-year-old Delphine J., a self-proclaimed psychic who goes by the pseudonym Amandine Roy.
In 2021, she published a four-hour interview with “independent journalist” Natasha Ray on her YouTube channel, in which she claimed that Brigitte Macron, whose maiden name is Tronier, was once a man named Jean-Michel Tronier.
The two women, who have pleaded not guilty, were ordered to pay restitution to Brigitte Macron and her brother in 2024, but their convictions were overturned on appeal. The appeal court verdict did not imply that the claims that Brigitte Macron was a man were true, but the judges ruled that the complaint against the women did not fall within the definition of defamation.
Brigitte Macron and Jean-Michel Tronier have appealed the case to France’s highest appeals court, the Court of Cassation.
What’s up with the lawsuit in the US
As for Macron’s lawsuit in the US, it is directed against the “clear and destructive lies” reproduced online by right-wing podcaster Candace Owens about 72-year-old Brigitte Macron. The lawsuit said the evidence clearly belies this “grotesque narrative,” which has turned into “a campaign of international humiliation” and “relentless intimidation on a global scale.”
In their lawsuit, the Macrons argue that the allegation that Brigitte Macron was born a man named Jean-Michel Tronier is completely false and that Tronier is actually Brigitte Macron’s 80-year-old brother. He lives in the northern French city of Amiens, where he grew up with Brigitte and four other siblings in a family famous for its local chocolate business. He was publicly present with Brigitte at the two presidential inaugurations of Emmanuel Macron in 2017 and 2022.
Since the election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017, claims that Brigitte Macron is a man have been circulated by far-right circles and conspiracy theorists in France and the US. The presidential couple filed a US defamation lawsuit in July against Owens, who created a series called “Becoming Brigitte,” alleging (she too) that France’s first lady was born male.
The Macrons plan to offer “scientific” evidence and photographs proving the first lady was not born male, according to their US lawyer.
