A group of 10 people who'd claimed online that Brigitte Macron was born a man have been convicted of cyber-harassment by a Paris court.
Ten people have been found guilty of cyber-bullying Brigitte Macron, the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, by a Paris court.
The defendants were accused of spreading false claims about her gender and sexuality, as well as making "malicious remarks" about the 24-year age gap between the couple.
Most of the defendants were handed suspended prison sentences of up to eight months, but one was jailed immediately for failing to attend court. Some had their social media accounts suspended.
The judge said the eight men and two women had acted with a clear desire to do harm to Brigitte Macron, making remarks online that were degrading and insulting.
Two of the ten people involved had already been convicted of slander last year, but the conviction was later overturned.
Among those convicted was Delphine Jegousse, 51, who identifies herself as an internet fortune teller under the name Amandine Roy. Prosecutors identified her as instrumental in amplifying the conspiracy theory after she produced a four-hour YouTube video in 2021 about Brigitte Macron’s alleged gender switch. Jegousse claimed to have uncovered a “state secret” that Macron was originally born Jean-Michel Trogneux, the name of her older brother...
The Macrons lodged a criminal complaint against Jegousse and another French participant in the video, Natacha Rey. The two were found guilty of slander in September 2024, but the verdict was overturned when an appeals court ruled they had spread the theories in “good faith.”
That case is still being appealed by the Macrons.
The argument used by the appeals court in clearing them was that saying someone had changed gender was not necessarily an "attack on their honour".
The Macrons are now taking that case to the high court of appeal.
All of this is being seen as a step toward the more serious case the Macrons have filed in the US against Candace Owens. Owens has been sued for defamation, with the Macrons claiming she made false claims about Brigitte even though she knew, or had reason to know, those claims weren't true.
The Macrons’ 22-count defamation lawsuit names Owens along with her business entities for allegedly conducting a “relentless year-long campaign of defamation” against the presidential couple, according to lawyer Tom Clare, whose firm previously represented Dominion Voting Systems in its landmark $787.5 million settlement against Fox News.
Owens repeated the baseless claim multiple times, according to the suit, including in a March 2024 YouTube video titled “Is France’s First Lady a Man?” In her subsequent eight-part series for her nearly 4.5 million YouTube subscribers, Owens called the allegations potentially “the biggest scandal in political history.” Owens asserted that Brigitte Macron engaged in identity theft, incest, forgery, fraud and abuses of power, according to the suit...
Clare told CNN that the Macrons attempted for about a year to get Owens to retract her statements before taking legal action. “This was really a last resort,” he said. “We have attempted to engage with her for the last year — putting evidence in front of her, request after request after request that she just simply do the right thing.”
A growing number of people on the right have come around to the idea that Owens is a fraud since her attacks on Erika Kirk and TPUSA. As for the Macrons' lawsuit, I read part of it last summer and I think there are parts of it that may clear the high bar for a defamation against a very famous person in a US court. For instance, at one point the Macrons sent Owens a demand letter saying she needed to retract certain false claims about Brigitte Macron. The letter included evidence and photos to back up various claims but instead of admitting fault, Owens simply never read most of it to her audience.
Owens continued to refuse to meaningfully engage with the December Retraction Demand. Instead, she intentionally led her audience to believe that the Macrons refused to say whether Mrs. Macron was born a woman or address Owens’ other claims. But Owens knew that the December Retraction Demand addressed each of her claims and proved them to be false. Owens cherry-picked portions of the December Retraction Demand to read to her audience but did not present the evidence against her claims that it contained—because it contradicted her preconceived narrative. Indeed, Owens told her viewers that she had evidence disproving portions of the December Retraction Demand, but she was “not going to tell you that today.” Spoiler: She never presented it.
Owens also made a claim about Brigitte statutorily raping President Macron, even claiming the retraction letter backed up her story.
On January 11, 2025, Defendants reposted on X the false assertion that the December Retraction Demand admitted that Mrs. Macron raped President Macron. This was blatantly false, and Owens knew it. The truth was that the December Retraction Demand pointedly denied that the President was statutorily raped.
On January 12, 2025, Defendants again reposted another claim that the December Retraction Demand admitted that Mrs. Macron raped President Macron and agreed it “was indeed the most stunning admission from the letter.” Owens repeated this claim on Defendants’ January 13, 2025 episode. Again, Owens knew these statements were false when she made them, but the truth did not matter when there were followers to be gained.
Also, she claimed the retraction letter never addressed the core charge she was making.
Owens repeated that the December Retraction Demand did not “deny that Brigitte is trans” or “explicitly state that Brigitte Macron was born a biological woman.” This is false. The December Retraction Demand explicitly stated that the Macrons were not concealing Mrs. Macron’s biological sex and that she was born Brigitte Trogneux, a woman.
There's more but I think in several cases it looks like Owens was directly saying the opposite of what the letter from the Macrons claimed. I think it's going to be hard to explain that as some kind of honest misunderstanding on her part. It looks a lot more like reckless disregard for the truth or even intentional malice. Again, Owens has displayed a lot of those tendencies over the past several months so it shouldn't surprise anyone she was doing this earlier.
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