On Tuesday, her daughter Tiphaine Auzier testified before the court in Paris, which hears the case of cyberbullying against the first lady of France, Brigitte Macron. This was reported by the AFP agency, writes TASR. The case is linked to claims that the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron was allegedly born a man. Ten persons between the ages of 41 and 65 – eight men and two women – are accused in the case of cyberbullying. Among them are a clerk, a gallery owner, an IT specialist, a teacher, a property manager and a business owner.
If the court finds them guilty, they face two years in prison. According to the French prosecutor’s office, they are accused of making inappropriate comments about the gender and sexuality of Brigitte Macron, comparing her age difference with her husband to “Pedophiles”.
Auzier testified in court on Tuesday how cyberbullying has affected her mother’s life since 2021. “She has to be careful with her choice of clothing and posture because she knows very well that her image can be misused and twisted into lies and false theories about her identity and integrity,” said the 41-year-old lawyer. According to the news website France Info, Auzier added that this situation also had a negative impact on her mother’s health.
Macron herself does not participate in the hearing, but she testified before the investigators that the spread rumor had a “very strong effect” on the people around her and on herself. She stated that her grandchildren had to listen that “their grandmother is a man”.
The accused publicist also working in the field of advertising testified before the court on Tuesday Aurélien Poirson-Atlan (41), known on social networks under the pseudonym Zoé Sagan, which is often associated with conspiracy theory circles. He defended his actions as satire when, for example, he claimed that “the Brigitte Macron affair is a shocking state secret involving state-sanctioned pedophilia”. He added that his messages were written using “artificial intelligence”.
Another accused, 55-year-old Jérôme C., he said in court that he was exercising his right to freedom of expression when posting about Macron on social media. The accused, 56-year-old Bertrand S., in turn, claimed that the process concerns his “freedom of thought” confronted with the “media deep state”.
Among the accused is also a woman who was already tried in 2022 for slandering Brigitte Macron – this is 51-year-old Delphine J., who describes herself as a spiritual medium and uses the pseudonym Amandine Roy. In 2021, she published on her YouTube channel a four-hour interview with alleged independent journalist Natacha Rey, in which she claimed that Brigitte Macron was once a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux – actually the name of the first lady’s brother.
Both of these women were ordered by the court in 2024 to pay compensation to Brigitte Macron and her brother. However, this sentence was overturned on appeal and the first lady appealed against it. The rumor that appeared in 2017 after the election of Emmanuel Macron as president happened viral in the United States as well, where the French presidential couple filed a lawsuit this summer against conservative activist Candace Owens, who also created a series of videos on the subject called Becoming Brigitte. Her videos were subsequently published with appreciation on social networks by some of the people who are now judging in Paris.
The French case concerns a cyberbullying lawsuit filed in August 2024 by the first lady’s lawyer. This led to two waves of arrests in February and March 2025. The trial is expected to last two days. A verdict is expected at a later date.
