September 12, 2024, 2:47 PM
September 12, 2024, 2:47 PM
A Paris court on Thursday convicted two women of defamation who spread a rumor on the Internet that the wife of the French president, Brigitte Macron was transgendera ‘fake news’ that went viral even in the United States.
The two women were sentenced to pay a fine of 500 euros.with a suspended sentence, and to pay a total of 8,000 euros in compensation to Brigitte Macron and 5,000 euros to her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux, both plaintiffs in the trial held last June.
“It is not a victory, it is a normal application of the law“Brigitte Macron’s lawyer, Jean Ennochi, who was absent from both the deliberations and the trial, told AFP.
At the June hearing, he stressed the “enormous” damage caused by this disinformation, which had “gone viral” around the world“In light of all the coverage,” he said, “we are now systematically taking legal action.” “Legal action is ongoing in France and abroad,” he added.
At the center of the case is a fake news which has resurfaced regularly on social media since Emmanuel Macron’s election in 2017, according to which Brigitte Macron, née Trogneux, never existed, but that her brother Jean-Michel adopted that identity after undergoing a sex change.
The two women were the protagonists of the story’s dissemination in 2021, in a long “interview” of more than four hours in which the first, the “medium” Amandine Roy, interviewed the second, Natacha Rey, a “self-taught independent journalist”, on her YouTube channel, about the discovery of this “deception”, “scam” and “state lie”.
Natacha Rey, who was sick, He did not attend the hearing and was denied a request for a postponement of the trial. He was not present at the deliberations, which attracted about 100 people, many of whom stayed outside the courtroom due to lack of space.
In the four-hour interview broadcast on YouTube, the two women showed photos of Brigitte Macron and her family, referred to surgeries she had allegedly undergone, claimed she was not the mother of her three children and gave personal information about her brother.
On January 31, 2022, Brigitte Macron files a defamation suit public before a civil party, which brought the two women before the court (something practically automatic according to the press law).
The false information gained further publicity after the YouTube video, and was even exported internationally – most recently in the United States, where it went viral on the far right in the midst of the presidential campaign.
Several female politicians around the world have already been victims of false accusations transphobics, including former US First Lady Michelle Obama, current US Vice President Kamala Harris, and former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
