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Two Women Who Claimed that French President Macron’s Wife Was Born as a Man Just Won a Defamation Case

Aaron Walker
Aaron Walker  |  7:15 PM on July 10, 2025

Well, here’s a pretty interesting turn of events:

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The cut off text:

In January 2022, Brigitte Macron announced her intention to sue for defamation and obtained a conviction against Natacha Rey and Amandine Roy on 12 September 2024. They appealed, and have just been acquitted, which means that the court has found the defendants not guilty of an offence.

This is a major victory –despite all the media vociferous denial and blame, Brigitte Macron has obtained NO CONVICTION FOR DEFAMATION against those who claim that she was born a man under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux. Brigitte Macron is the ‘wife’ of Emmanuel Macron, whom she met in 1992, when the future French president was 14 years old.

Now, let’s start off with some caveats. While this author is a lawyer, he is not a French lawyer and their system is reportedly pretty radically different from our common law system. Indeed, this author doesn’t even speak French. And of course we always avoid engaging Gell-Mann amnesia (we explained the term, previously, here). Thus, we remember the fact that reporting on American legal proceedings is typically terrible even when everyone involved seems to be trying in good faith to understand the truth, and, to avoid that amnesia, we approach any legal reporting with appropriate caution.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but we never heard of Mr. Poussard until today, so we looked around to see if what he is reporting is true. So, we found this, which is ultimately from the AFP:

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From the article:

Disinformation on Macron’s gender has circulated on social media for years. She has also been attacked over the 24-year age difference with President Emmanuel Macron.

The 72-year-old first lady, whose maiden name is Trogneux, has a brother called Jean-Michel.

Brigitte Macron filed a libel complaint against two women after they posted a YouTube video in December 2021, alleging she had once been a man named Jean-Michel. … 

Rey spoke about the ‘state lie’ and ‘scam’ she claimed to have uncovered -- that a certain Jean-Michel Trogneux had changed gender to become Brigitte, then married the president.

They discussed surgery she was supposed to have undergone, and revealed personal information about the first lady’s brother.

The claim went viral, including recently among conspiracy theorists in the United States.

A lower court in September last year ordered the two women to pay 8,000 euros in damages to Brigitte Macron, and 5,000 euros ($5,500) to her brother.

But the Paris Appeals Court on Thursday let them off, including over a false claim of ‘grooming a minor’, arguing they had made the mistake in ‘good faith’. …

The court did not provide further explanations.

So, based on this reporting (if we can trust it), it doesn’t sound like they won on the issue of truth. In other words, this author doesn’t read this reporting as saying that Brigitte Macron is definitely a man or that the court said that she is one. Rather the court seems to think that the defendants were wrong but were acting in good faith.

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And while this author knows nothing about French defamation law, we will note that a number of American doctrines might apply if a person acted in good faith. For instance, in American law, if you allegedly defame a public figure (a public official or celebrity, more or less), you can’t be held liable unless it is proven that you did so with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not, which sounds comparable, if not identical, to the good faith defense that allegedly applied here. So that is an example of how you could win a defamation case without being found to be telling the truth in America, and it sounds like a similar thing could happen in France.

In any case, this author doesn’t know if Mrs. Macron is a man. We haven’t cared enough to look into the issue, not even after she slapped her husband on camera.

Well, the case is over so presumably there is no discovery—if that is even a thing in France. And as a matter of fact, we are not even sure French law allows for truth as a defense. For instance, in the famous Zenger trial before the American Revolution, Zenger was not allowed to present any evidence that his accusations against Governor William Cosby…

…(no, not that Bill Cosby) were true. But it was generally agreed that the jury acquitted Zenger as jury nullification because he was not allowed to present truth as a defense. And while some post-revolutionary American courts at one time followed a similar precedent of not allowing for truth as a defense when it comes to public officials, in modern American law truth is always a complete defense to any claim of defamation, no matter who you allegedly defamed.

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So he seems to claim that the court was actually saying that there was no harm caused by the alleged falsehood? That doesn’t line up with what other reporting seems to say, but we don’t pretend to know who is right.

He is probably referring to the fact that Candace Owens had responded to this news:

This prompted a response from Piers Morgan:

Watching these two go at it makes us think this:

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Again, we don’t know if that legal analysis is accurate.

Actually, it can mean nothing.

Still, whether these women are right or wrong on the facts—and again, we haven’t cared enough to look into it—we tend to think that the criminal law should stay out of defamation cases. Here, they were only fined—until that fine was vacated on appeal—but by the same logic, they could potentially be thrown in prison. And why should the government get involved in directly patrolling whether someone defamed someone else? Let them take them to normal civil court, like we generally do in America.

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