Paris: Emmanuel Macron, who is into his ninth year as President of France, has faced multiple challenges and obstacles in his political career. But none of those was perhaps as personal and bizarre as the one he is confronting currently.
Macron is fighting a ‘gender conspiracy’ against the country’s First Lady Brigitte Macron. So much so that the President is being forced to prove that his wife is not a transgender woman. There is a 23-year age gap between Emmanuel (49) and Brigitte (72).
According to the Macrons’ lawyer Tom Clare, the President plans to present “photographic and scientific evidence” to a US court, as part of a defamation case against American far-right influencer and political commentator Candace Owens.
Clare elaborated that Macron will provide pictures of Brigitte Macron during pregnancy and raising her children.
“These folks are obviously important on the world stage, but they’re also human beings, and it’s offensive and hurtful to them to be accused of effectively criminal acts and conspiring to lie to the world about their identities. It is incredibly upsetting to think that you have to go and subject yourself to put this type of proof forward,” Clare said on a BBC podcast.
How it all started
The weird claims date back to 2017, when French blogger Natacha Rey alleged that Brigitte was her own brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux, who assumed a new identity by changing her sex. Four years later, Natacha repeated the accusation in an interview with a spiritual medium, Amandine Roy.
After that video went viral months ahead of the 2022 French Presidential election, the Macrons sued Natacha and Amandine for defamation.
The Macrons got a favourable verdict in September 2024, but the Paris Court of Appeal overturned that ruling in July this year, saying that the remarks were made in “good faith”, and did not constitute defamation.
Meanwhile, in 2024, American commentator Owens – who has over 4 million YouTube subscribers — picked up the claims against Brigitte and alleged repeatedly that France’s First Lady is a man. The influencer even pledged her “entire professional reputation” on the assertion.
The Macrons urged Owens to withdraw her allegation, but the latter did not relent. Finally, they filed a defamation lawsuit against Owens in July 2025 as a “last resort”.
Owens dismissed the case against her as a “desperate public relations strategy”, and referred to Brigitte as a “very goofy man”.
What is in store for Owens only time will tell, but the Macrons find themselves in an extraordinary situation of having to defend the First Lady’s gender in court. That, too, in a different country!
Presenting intimate family photographs and medical evidence is humiliating, but their legal team said it’s necessary to halt the conspiracy.