The trial of ten people accused of having spread online falsehoods that Brigitte Macron, the wife of the president of France, began this Monday in Paris with unsuccessful defense maneuvers to try to postpone the process.
The first of the two scheduled sessions at the Paris Correctional Court took place without the presence of -represented by two lawyers-, and with a cloud of photographers at the entrance to a small courtroom, in which a long line of journalists and curious onlookers formed. Given the large influx of people, the court set up a second room in which the hearing was broadcast live.
Ten people, between 41 and 60 years old and with a very diverse profile, are accused of having spread numerous malicious statements and lies about the “gender” and “sexuality” of Brigitte Macron, and could be sentenced to up to two years in prison if found guilty. They claimed, in particular, that his birth name was Jean-Michel Trogneux, which is the real name of a brother of the first lady.
The accused are also accused of having tried to give a tinge of pedophilia at the beginning of the relationship between Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron (24 years old), since they met when she was his teacher at secondary school.
Seven of the ten defendants were present in the courtroom. The first to testify justified the dissemination of news about the French first lady’s gender in the exercise of freedom of expression and the right to parody.
Jean-Christophe D., a 54-year-old professor, said he relied on that freedom to joke to imply, in one of his tweets put into question, that Brigitte Macron is President Macron’s father. Another of the defendants, Jérôme A., a 49-year-old computer scientist, complained to the court that “normal people” like him are prosecuted for “some anodyne tweets.”
Among the three absent from the hearing, the self-proclaimed “self-taught journalist” Natacha Rey stood out, to whom the conspiracy origin of the rumor about the French first lady is attributed. Rey, whose real name is Christelle L., suffers from advanced cancer.
Another of the best-known characters in the process is Aurélien Poirson-Atlan, 41 years old and known on the networks under the pseudonym Zoe Sagan, who could not be represented by his main lawyer, the Franco-Spanish Juan Branco. The reason is that the bar association suspended his permit to practice professionally for having violated the confidentiality of the summary of a rape process that affects him personally.
To add more confusion, the defense lawyers present initially requested a postponement, alleging that they had not had time to analyze the elements of the summary, especially the physical and psychological stress that Brigitte Macron reported having suffered due to the allegations about her gender.
The lawyers complained that they had not received the complete summary until last weekend and, once that first demand was denied, they attempted a second alleging that the accusations against their clients posed a threat to their rights and freedoms protected by the .
The president of the court explained that he is analyzing the popular prosecution’s request for one of Brigitte Macron’s daughters, Tiphaine Auzière, to appear this Tuesday, when the trial ends and when the verdict could be known.
At the entrance to the hearing, one of the best-known defendants, the self-proclaimed psychic Amandine Roy (her real name is Delphine J.), assured the press that “she had not committed any infraction” and clarified that this was how she was going to explain it to the judges.
Anatomy of a hoax
The fake news cycle about the French first lady began with Natacha Rey, in the midst of the covid crisis at the beginning of 2021, and was then amplified on the networks by both Amandine Roy and Xavier Poussard (38 years old), who currently lives in Milan (Italy) and has not been named as a defendant in this process.
Poussard, a contributor to an anti-Semitic far-right publication known as has been a key figure, especially in giving international projection to this matter by coming into contact in March 2024 with Candace Owens, a influencer African American close to the president of the United States, who spread the rumors that emerged in France to his several million followers.
In fact, the Macrons have launched a parallel process in the United States against Owens, whom they have denounced for “defamation.”
