A court in Paris has convicted two women of defamation after spreading false news that the First Lady of France, Brigitte Macron, is transgender.
Amandine Roy and Natacha Rey will have to pay around €8,000 in damages to the president's wife and €5,000 to her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux.
The women had posted a video on YouTube in December 2021 claiming that the French president's wife had once been a man named Jean-Michel, a falsehood that went viral just weeks before the 2022 presidential election and prompted Macron to file a defamation complaint.
Posts circulating on social media claimed that the first lady, formerly Brigitte Trogneux, had never existed and that her brother Jean-Michel had changed gender and assumed that identity.