Family affair. While she has just released her first novel, Seats, published by Stock, Tiphaine Auzière can hardly ignore questions concerning her mother and her stepfather, Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron. If in her book, the lawyer dissects the workings of justice, she also faces it in her personal life, the wife of the President of the Republic being the target of stubborn conspiracy rumors.
Some in fact claim that Brigitte Macron was born a man, under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux – who is in reality her brother. The first lady has since found herself the target of virulent transphobic attacks. Theories which are also relayed by media personalities, such as Myriam Palomba, columnist in Do not touch My TVwho asked in 2022 in a video published on the site founded by the far-right essayist Alain Soral, Equality and Reconciliation, “if Jean-Michel Trogneux exists, why don’t they take him out of the closet”.
Like a sect
And it is precisely on Cyril Hanouna’s show that Tiphaine Auzière chose to respond to these rumors this Monday. After recalling that she was “born to a dad and a mom” who she indicated was behind the host by showing the photo of Brigitte Macron, she confided that these rumors were “on the same level” as those who think “ that we are governed by reptiles, that the Earth is flat.”
And to add that the real problem goes beyond what his mother may think: “the indirect victims” of these conspiracy theories who believe in them and find themselves in the same situation as the people under the influence of a sect.
Isolation
“I see a lot of people who come to see me at the office on the subjects of control, saying “I have a member of my family who is isolated because he believes in fake news”. And he isolated himself because there is no longer any contact, there is no longer any connection with this person. And finally when I hear people still today, despite all the evidence – I could give you my marital status, it would not change anything – despite all the evidence, who will continue to believe that and who are isolated,” explained Tiphaine Auzière. And he added that anyone can “overnight start believing in theories, this one or others”.
Brigitte Macron and her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux, filed a criminal complaint for defamation against two women, one presenting herself as an “independent journalist” and the other a medium, who spread this rumor on social networks at the end of the year 2021, as recalled Release in its Check News section. The case will be judged in March 2025 at the Paris judicial court, as confirmed by their lawyer Me Jean Ennochi.
