Ten guilty of transphobic cyberbullying of Brigitte Macron, court rules

Ten people in France have been found guilty of cyberbullying first lady Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, by claiming she is secretly a transgender woman.

A court in Paris on Monday (5 January) ruled the defendants, which includes eight men and two women aged between 41 and 65, had spread false claims about her gender and sexuality alongside making “malicious remarks” about the 24-year age gap between the couple.

The court noted “particularly degrading, insulting, and malicious” comments made by the defendants about Macron’s gender, amid a wide-ranging conspiracy theory that she is secretly a trans woman who was born under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux – which is, in fact, the name of her brother.

The court decision comes as the Macron’s pursue a separate defamation case in the United States against far-right influencer Candace Owens, who has repeatedly pushed the conspiracy theory about Brigitte’s gender including releasing an eight-part audio and video series on the topic. The defamation complaint, which is 219 pages long, was filed in Delaware state court in July 2025 and names both Owens and her business entities, which are incorporated in the Democratic state.

The defendants were also accused of linking the age gap between the French president, 48, and first lady, 72, to a peadophillic relationship. The couple met when he was a 15-year-old student at Le Providence, a Catholic school in northern France, and she was his drama teacher, then aged 39. They married in 2007 after Brigitte divorced her first husband, when Macron was 29 and she was 54. Their relationship has been the subject of much press and public scrutiny.

Some of the posts made by the defendants were said to have been viewed tens of thousands of times.

The first lady did not attend the trial hearings in October but reportedly told investigators after filing the legal complaint that the false claims she is trans have “strongly affected” herself and loved ones.

Her daughter, 41-year-old Tiphaine Auziere, also testified that the faux claims had impacted her mother and their whole family, saying there had been a “deterioration of her health” and a “deterioration of her quality of life”.

“She’s constantly having to pay attention to what she wears, how she holds herself because she knows that her image can be distorted,” she said, as per French outlet Le Monde.

Auziere also 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.”

The defendants were given sentences that ranged from cyberbullying awareness training to suspended prison sentences of up to eight months.

At the time of writing, Brigitte Macron has not yet commented on the outcome of the case but speaking with TF1 on Sunday evening (4 January) defended her action against cyberbullying, saying such people are “playing with my family tree”.

“A birth certificate is not nothing. It is a father or a mother who goes to declare their child, who says who he is or who she is,” she said of the conspiracy theory about her gender.

“I want to help adolescents to fight against harassment, and if I do not set an example, it will be difficult.”