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Brigitte Macron’s daughter has told a Paris court that false claims online that the French first lady was born a man had damaged her mother’s quality of life, leaving her worrying every day about the clothes she wears and how she stands.
Tiphaine Auzière, 41, a lawyer, was called as a witness at the trial of 10 people accused of online harassment of Brigitte Macron by creating or reposting social media posts falsely claiming she was a man.
Auzière said photographs of her mother, including private summer photos, had been posted online with negative comments. “The consequence is now that she systematically has to pay attention to what she wears, how she holds herself, no matter what she’s doing in her daily life, because she knows that her image can be distorted to serve these attacks.”
Eight men and two women, aged 41 to 60, are on trial in Paris for online harassment of Brigitte Macron. Some of the defendants had a small social media following, while others were better known. All are accused of making malicious comments about Brigitte Macron’s gender and sexuality. For some, this included equating her age difference with her husband, the French president Emmanuel Macron, to “paedophilia”. If convicted, they face up to two years in prison.
Auzière, who is one of three children from Brigitte Macron’s first marriage, said her mother had been affected by social media posts that had caused a “deterioration of her health” and a “deterioration of her quality of life”.
She said: “Not a day or week goes by when someone does not talk about this to her … What is very hard for her are the repercussions on her family … Her grandchildren hear what is being said: ‘Your grandmother is lying’ or ‘Your grandmother is your grandfather.’ This affects her a lot. She does not know how to stop it … She’s not elected, she has not sought anything, and she is permanently subjected to these attacks. I – as a daughter, a woman and a mother – would not wish her life on anyone.”
Auzière said her mother now had the “constant behaviour of being on alert that the slightest image of her could be used against her to feed hateful attacks. So she can’t have calm in her daily activities … It’s the impossibility of having a normal life without this issue being brought up, the attacks that she’s the target of. Systematically, her identity is being questioned, people are constantly talking about this to her.”
Auzière said the claims her mother was a man were like a “whirlwind that never stops”.
The Paris trial is the latest phase in a legal battle on both sides of the Atlantic against the false claim that Brigitte Macron is a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux.
The Macrons have also filed a US lawsuit for defamation against the conservative podcaster Candace Owens for amplifying and repeating the claim. The Macrons’ US lawsuit states that the accusation that Brigitte Macron is a man called Jean-Michel Trogneux is completely false and Trogneux is in fact Brigitte Macron’s older brother. Trogneux, 80, lives in the northern French town of Amiens, where he grew up with Brigitte and their siblings in a family famous for its chocolate business.
Auzière told the court she saw her uncle a few months ago and “he was really well.”
Earlier, Jean-Luc M, 65, a retired business owner who is now a deputy mayor in a village in Saône-et-Loire, was questioned about social media posts he shared or wrote, including one referring to Brigitte Macron as “our first ladyboy”. He denied online harassment, saying: “I never intended to cause harm.”
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Aurélien Poirson-Atlan, 41, a well-known publicist and fiction writer who had a high-profile social media account under the pseudonym Zoé Sagan, was questioned about four social media posts concerning Brigitte Macron’s identity, including posts by Owens that he shared. He denied online harassment, saying the legal proceedings were “very dangerous for freedom of expression”.
He said his posts about Brigitte Macron were “satire” and “humorous”. He said France was a nation with “satire in its DNA”. He said Brigitte Macron should have published some photographs of herself while pregnant, which would have put an end to the claims.
Bertrand S, an art gallery owner, denied harassment. He said he shared posts about Brigitte Macron being a man because he felt it was becoming a global issue “with consequences for France”. He felt that if lots of people posted about it, “the Macrons would be obliged to give us an answer to our questions.”
The false theory about Brigitte Macron’s gender spread in part because the Macrons’ relationship had long been a topic of comment online. Brigitte Macron, who is 24 years older than her husband, first met Emmanuel Macron when she was a French teacher at his Jesuit secondary school in Amiens, directing him in a school play.
The Macrons’ US lawsuit against Owens stated: “Through the school’s theatre programme, President Macron and Mrs Macron formed a deeper intellectual connection.” It added: “At all times, the teacher-student relationship between Mrs Macron and President Macron remained within the bounds of the law.” Brigitte Macron, who has three children from her first marriage, divorced in 2006 and she and Emmanuel Macron married the following year, when he was 30.
