Ten people, accused of cyber-bullying French First Lady Brigitte Macron, will face trial this week.
The accused had allegedly claimed that Brigitte (72) was born a man and even made “malicious remarks” about the 24-year-age gap between Brigitte and her husband Emmanuel Macron.
The accused included an elected official, a gallery owner and a teacher, of age between 41 and 60. If found guilty, the accused will face upto two year’s imprisonment.
The French First Lady had filed a complaint in Paris in August 2024 that was followed by an investigation into online harassment and arrests in December 2024 and February 2025. The lawsuit called the claims as “verifiably false and devastating lies”.
According to BBC, two of the accused – self-styled independent
journalist Natacha Rey and internet fortune-teller Amandine Roy – were found guilty of slander last year for claiming that France’s first lady had never existed, and that her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux had changed gender and started using her name.
In 2024, the two women, who have denied wrongdoing, were ordered to pay damages to Brigitte and her brother but their conviction was then overturned on appeal. However, the judge did not give any remark on the claims but said that the women did not fit the definition of defamation.
Following this, Brigitte and Jean-Michel Trogneux took the case to France’s highest appeals court, the cour de cassation.
The French President and his wife had also filed a defamation lawsuit in the US in July against the repeated online comments that Brigitte was born a man.
According to The Guardian, the US lawsuit said evidence clearly disproved this “grotesque narrative”, which had become “a campaign of global humiliation” and “relentless bullying on a worldwide scale”.
