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London: The daughter of Brigitte Macron has testified about the damage to her mother from false claims that she was born a man, in an extraordinary court case that will decide whether those who spread the rumours should be jailed for harassment.
The dramatic hearing in a Paris courtroom came as French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife also pursue a defamation claim in the US courts against an American right-wing commentator for making the same assertions.
Tiphaine Auziere, Brigitte Macron’s daughter, arrives at court.Credit: AP
The testimony from Tiphaine Auziere, 41, was a key moment on the second day of the criminal trial in Paris, after the prosecution laid out charges against 10 people, ranging from an art gallery owner to an online fortune-teller.
If found guilty, the defendants could be sent to prison for up to two years, turning the case into a test of whether false claims can be justified as satire or free speech.
Auziere, the daughter of Macron and her first husband, banker André-Louis Auzière, told the court there had been a deterioration in her mother’s health as the claims spread online.
“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.
“This has repercussions on her children and grandchildren. They hear things at school such as, ‘Your grandmother is a man’. I don’t know how to make it stop,” she said.
Her mother, who has not attended the criminal trial this week, has previously said the claims had hurt her family members, especially her grandchildren.
The Macrons did not attend the hearing in person.Credit: Bloomberg
The French first lady lodged a complaint with authorities in August last year about online bullying, leading to arrests in December and February.
One of the defendants in the criminal case, an online spiritual medium who calls herself Amandine Roy, spread the rumours in 2021 during an interview with journalist Natacha Rey.
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Another defendant, art gallery owner Aurélien Poirson-Atlan, rejected the accusation of cyberbullying and told the court that his online posts were free speech and a form of satire.
Many of the defendants spread claims aired by right-wing influencer Candace Owens, who runs a talk show on YouTube after being fired by The Daily Wire last year for making comments that were seen as antisemitic.
The Candace Owens YouTube channel has 5.5 million subscribers, and its recent episodes included an interview with Harvey Weinstein, the movie producer convicted of sexual assault, in which she said there was overwhelming evidence he had been “set up”.
The Macrons lodged their defamation claim against Owens in a Delaware court in July over her repeated assertion that the French first lady was born male, named Jean-Michel and is a man.
A key feature of the US case is the Macrons’ claim that Owens sought to harass them and cause pain in order to gain “attention and notoriety” for herself.
Candace Owens has repeatedly claimed that Brigitte Macron was born Jean-Michel Trogneux.Credit: Getty Images
Their lawyer, Tom Clare, said last month that they would provide expert testimony and scientific evidence when the defamation case goes to trial.
Owens has described the case as a threat to free speech and maintained her claim from last year about the first lady’s gender.
“I would stake my entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man,” Owens said on X in March last year.
“Any journalist or publication that is trying to dismiss this plausibility is immediately identifiable as establishment. I have never seen anything like this in my life. The implications here are terrifying.”
Brigitte Macron was married to Auzière from 1974 to 2006, and they had three children. She met Emmanuel Macron in 1993, when she was 39 and he was 15. They married in 2007.
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