The Frenchman whose name appears on court filings in two countries has lived in Amiens his entire life and has not spoken publicly about any of it.
Jean-Michel Trogneux is 81 years old, lives in Amiens, France, and has never sought public attention. Since late 2021, his name has appeared in a false conspiracy theory, two French court proceedings, and a defamation lawsuit filed in Delaware. He has not commented publicly on any of it.
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Who Is Jean-Michel Trogneux?
Jean-Michel Trogneux is the older brother of French First Lady Brigitte Macron. Born in Amiens on February 11, 1945, he is one of six children born to Jean Trogneux (1909–1994) and Simone Pujol (1910–1998), who owned the family chocolaterie in the city. The Trogneux family has operated a chocolaterie on Place Notre-Dame in Amiens since 1872, now in its sixth generation.
Brigitte, born April 13, 1953, is the youngest of the siblings. She left Amiens to teach school, married Emmanuel Macron in 2007, and became First Lady of France after his 2017 presidential win. Jean-Michel has never held public office and has no public profile.
The False Claim and How It Spread
The claim that Brigitte Macron was born male first appeared online after Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 election, but it spread widely only in December 2021, when Amandine Roy, a self-described spiritual medium, posted a four-hour YouTube interview on her channel featuring Natacha Rey, who called herself an independent journalist.
Rey claimed to have uncovered what she described as a “state lie”: that Jean-Michel Trogneux had undergone gender transition to become Brigitte, that official records had been fabricated, and that Brigitte was not the biological mother of her three children. The video reached 500,000 views within hours. The claims circulated widely across French social media in the weeks before the April 2022 presidential election.
Brigitte Macron and her brother filed a joint defamation complaint against Roy and Rey that year.
The French Court Cases
The Roy and Rey Defamation Trial
The trial opened in Paris in June 2024. Roy attended; Rey did not, citing illness.
In September 2024, the Paris tribunal convicted both women. Brigitte Macron was awarded €8,000 in damages and Jean-Michel Trogneux €5,000; each woman was also fined €500.
The Paris Court of Appeal reversed the verdict in July 2025. The court did not find Roy and Rey’s claims to be true. The reversal turned on a specific point of French law: accusing someone of being transgender is not classified as an attack on their honour, because French law does not treat transition as dishonourable. On that basis, all 18 passages from the video that formed the defamation complaint were cleared.
Jean Ennochi, Brigitte Macron’s lawyer, responded to the ruling: “I’m going to see what my clients and I are going to do, but obviously we don’t agree with this ruling.”
Brigitte Macron and her brother have since appealed to France’s Court of Cassation. That court will rule on whether the appeals court applied the law correctly, not on the truth of the original claims. No date for the ruling has been set.
The Cyberbullying Convictions
A separate cyberbullying case reached its verdict in January 2026. Ten people had gone on trial in Paris in October 2025 for spreading the same false claims about Brigitte Macron online. Defendants included a publicist, a gym teacher, a gallery owner, and an elected official; several argued in court that their posts were satire.
All ten were convicted on January 6, 2026. Sentences ranged from an eight-month suspended prison term to mandatory harassment courses; several defendants had their social media accounts suspended. The court ordered all ten to pay €10,000 collectively to Brigitte Macron.
Brigitte Macron’s daughter Tiphaine Auzière testified during the trial that her mother had started worrying “every day about the clothes she wore and how she stood” and that the harassment had caused a “deterioration of her health.” The evening before the verdict, Brigitte Macron appeared on TF1 and said she had pursued the case to “set an example” against online harassment.
Candace Owens and the Lawsuit in Delaware
In March 2024, American podcaster Candace Owens posted on X that she would stake her entire professional reputation on the claim that Brigitte Macron was born male. Owens then produced an eight-part YouTube series called “Becoming Brigitte,” pushing a version of the conspiracy that went further than the original: she claimed the real Brigitte Trogneux had died in childhood and that Jean-Michel had assumed his dead sister’s identity. Owens had close to 4.5 million YouTube subscribers at the time. She also sold merchandise that included a fake TIME magazine cover with Brigitte Macron’s face and the caption “Man of the Year.”
In December 2024, the Macrons sent Owens a formal retraction demand that included Brigitte’s birth announcement from an Amiens newspaper and childhood photographs. Owens did not retract.
On July 23, 2025, the Macrons filed a 219-page defamation complaint in Delaware Superior Court (Case No. N25C-07-194 SKR) against Owens, Candace Owens LLC, and GeorgeTom Inc. The complaint covers 22 counts and describes Owens’s conduct as “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions” that caused “tremendous damage to the Macrons.” Clare Locke LLP, the firm that represented Dominion Voting Systems in its record settlement against Fox News, is handling the case for the Macrons.
In September 2025, Owens filed a 43-page motion to dismiss, arguing that Delaware courts have no jurisdiction, the claims are time-barred under France’s 90-day defamation statute, and the case should be heard in France or Tennessee. The Macrons responded with a 241-page amended complaint in late September 2025.
No U.S. court has ruled on the motion to dismiss as of June 2026.
Where the Cases Stand in June 2026
| Case | Jurisdiction | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Roy and Rey defamation appeal | France, Court of Cassation | Pending, no date set |
| 10 cyberbullying convictions | Paris, France | Decided, January 6, 2026 |
| Candace Owens defamation suit | Delaware, United States | Motion to dismiss pending |
In 2023, Jean-Baptiste Trogneux, Brigitte Macron’s grandnephew who runs the family’s chocolate shop in Amiens, was attacked outside the building by protesters shouting about the president’s wife before running off. Brigitte Macron condemned the assault publicly.
Trogneux attended the court proceedings in France and filed appeals alongside his sister, but has not given a press interview or made a public statement about any of it. He has lived in Amiens since 1945.
