Xavier Poussard did not arrive in Nashville empty-handed. When he landed in the Tennessee capital on January 20, 2025, the journalist was holding what he would later describe as "a gold mine" — the manuscript of his book, titled Becoming Brigitte, which promotes over 340 pages what is in reality a vast conspiracy theory: the false idea that Brigitte Macron, the wife of the President of the Republic, was born male.
Poussard was there to discuss it with Candace Owens. The American right-wing influencer, a former Donald Trump supporter turned podcaster, had contacted him with the idea of turning his work into a global phenomenon.
Owens was not discovering the subject: she had already discussed it on her YouTube channel, which hosts one of the most-watched podcasts in the world, and had been struck by her audience's enthusiasm for this story, Xavier Poussard would recount in an interview with POLITICO. She was now ready to move to the next level.
The duo was as unlikely as it was complementary. Poussard — then not very comfortable in front of cameras, with an intellectual look tempered by thick plastic-rimmed glasses — had put all the details of the theory on paper in a dense, sometimes dizzying style. Owens, for her part, was a media veteran massively followed on YouTube, with the community and know-how needed to give the story a global dimension. It was she, recounts Xavier Poussard, who suggested drawing inspiration from Becoming, Michelle Obama's bestseller, for the title and visual identity of the project.
Just three weeks after his arrival, the French author therefore published Becoming Brigitte (Devenir Brigitte in French), a self-published book "presented" by Candace Owens. At the same time, the influencer broadcast a series of eight videos on her YouTube channel, which today exceed 30 million views. Questioned by POLITICO, Xavier Poussard refused to disclose the exact number of sales, specifying however that the book sold between 50,000 and 100,000 copies — a figure he had never made public until now.
The story in question nevertheless has a major problem: it is false. Brigitte Macron and her husband, the President of the French Republic, decided to take the matter to court. In a 250-page complaint filed in the State of Delaware, they accuse Candace Owens of having spread "extravagant, defamatory and far-fetched" narratives coupled with "devastating lies, concerning [easily] verifiable facts, regarding the Macrons".
The highly publicized lawsuits filed in July 2025 marked a new stage in the fight led by the presidential couple against this conspiracy theory that emerged in the shadows in France in 2018, before gaining a wider audience across the Atlantic via far-right media relays.
The story of the complaint against Owens and that of the proceedings in France reveals the path of a successful conspiracy theory, from the depths of the French internet to YouTube channels with a global audience. It also tells of the limits of power in the age of social networks, where even some of the most powerful people in the world struggle to stem the spread of fake news, where audience becomes profit and the attention market a windfall for the most extreme theories.
The birth of a conspiracy theory
December 10, 2021. From her apartment in Angers, Amandine Roy, a medium and aspiring influencer, presented to her modest YouTube community a choice guest. Nathalie Rey, 51 years old, had already spent three years trying to uncover what she believed to be a vast hoax involving the First Lady of France.
Amandine Roy, whose real name is Delphine Jegousse, presents herself as a "medium, whistleblower and journalist". She has bleached hair and wears large hoop earrings. Her activity is eclectic: clairvoyance consultations — including a five-session training called "crystal skull workshop" — and what she calls "authentic information". From her makeshift studio, she began the interview while Nathalie Rey, connected remotely, seemed to struggle with her iPhone.
Nathalie Rey was eager to make her research known but did not want to show her face. She spoke with the camera off, under the pseudonym "Natacha". Only the icon of her profile picture, where she wears sunglasses and a large black hat, appeared on the screen. Her thesis: "the official story" of Brigitte Macron's life is a lie. According to her, the First Lady is none other than her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux, who would have transitioned to become a woman — the person concerned has nevertheless been photographed alongside his sister at Emmanuel Macron's inauguration ceremonies in 2017 and 2022.
The apprentice investigator's theory, as exposed in the video, rests mainly on Brigitte Macron's appearance. "The strangeness of her physique has bothered me from the start," she explains in the first minutes. She also relies on hypotheses about the President's wife's family history, in which Nathalie Rey claims to have detected "numerous anomalies".
She began to take an interest in Brigitte Macron's life in 2018, shortly after her husband's first election as President. After losing her job in a small company, her growing doubts about the couple's official biography became her main occupation. A supporter of the Yellow Vests movement, Nathalie Rey nourishes a deep mistrust of political elites, mistrust that only strengthened under the effect of her social isolation and her hours spent on the Internet during the Covid pandemic, recounts journalist Emmanuelle Anizon in L'Affaire Madame (StudioFact, 2024).
Nathalie Rey was notably motivated, recounts the journalist, by the conviction that the rich and powerful benefit from "impunity", even when it comes to the most horrific crimes. She thus closely followed the Jeffrey Epstein affair, this financier, now deceased, connected to global elites and convicted for having set up a sexual predation network.
For three years, Nathalie Rey therefore conducted her small investigation. But the journalists she approached showed little interest in her findings. With the exception of Xavier Poussard. He had himself begun working on this subject for "Faits et Documents", a far-right publication then supported by Alain Soral, the polemist multi-convicted for his antisemitic and negationist remarks.
Xavier Poussard put Nathalie Rey's suspicions on paper, adding his own research and a touch of storytelling. This gave rise, in 2021, to a series of articles full of "what if" and question marks. He develops the idea that the alleged identity of Brigitte Macron would only be the tip of the iceberg. Nathalie Rey's theory, amplified by Xavier Poussard, indeed affirms that the media have not only concealed the First Lady's presumed past, but also what they consider to be the sexual grooming of Emmanuel Macron by his future wife, when she was his high school teacher. The author describes the Macrons as a "perverse couple".
His sulfurous writings remained at the time confined to a confidential far-right readership. It is Amandine Roy's YouTube video that, by reaching a wider public, propelled the story into another dimension.
During the four-hour broadcast, Nathalie Rey vigorously attacked the "political caste" and the "manipulative and propagandist media". According to the two women, journalists are either accomplices or forced to remain silent under threat.
In a few days, the video reached 500,000 views, imposing the hashtag #JeanMichelTrogneux in the top 10 of Twitter trends. What had started as the obsession of an isolated woman was becoming a viral phenomenon.
And it had not escaped Brigitte Macron.
Streisand effect
The First Lady acted quickly. Less than a week after the video's buzz, her lawyer announced his intention to file a complaint against the people at the origin of the spread of this fake news. A few weeks later, she was questioned about the controversy on the set of TF1.
"Obviously, it is a lie," Brigitte Macron then indicated in an interview where she also returned to her long fight against cyberharassment. "I fear violence […] I fear hatred […] I fear this kind of permanent crescendo," she also declared in a broader reference to the political climate, then very tense. "I think we did not protect ourselves enough from this and we let far too many things pass."
The First Lady, who declined our interview request for this article, speaks of her complaint as a matter of principle, in line with her commitments. For years she has expressed herself in favor of stronger regulation of social networks, particularly to fight cyberharassment.
"If I do nothing while I have been fighting harassment for four years… I am not audible," she also declared on RTL.
But her approach has collateral effects: the prosecutions give fodder to conspiracy theory partisans. These see in the counter-attack of the country's most powerful couple a confirmation that they have something to hide.
Years later, a similar dynamic is set in motion with the complaint filed in the United States against Candace Owens, which is still only at the first stages of its judicial journey.
"The engine of the case is Brigitte Macron," declares Xavier Poussard. "She is a Streisand booster who does not master the Streisand effect."
The Streisand effect designates the phenomenon according to which attempts to counter misinformation end up attracting even more attention to it. Mike Borowski, host of an alternative talk-show become one of the main relays of the theory in France, notes that this phenomenon has been put into action.
"It is them who created the buzz in fact," he explains in an interview with POLITICO. "I mean, Natacha Rey, Amandine Roy, myself, or all the others, Xavier [Poussard] … Without the interventions of Brigitte Macron and Emmanuel Macron, it would have been an internet story."
"Everything comes out"
At the time Becoming Brigitte was released, it had already been more than three years that the Macron couple fought against this conspiracy theory.
The first defamation complaint was filed, in January 2022, by Brigitte Macron and her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux, against Nathalie Rey and Amandine Roy, the two women at the origin of the viral YouTube video.
The French authorities, on their side, engaged prosecutions for cyberharassment against people accused of having spread malicious accusations about the First Lady. Xavier Poussard, who lives in Italy, was questioned by the police as part of this procedure, but he has to date not been charged or heard by a court.
For the Macrons, the allegations have a particularly sensitive character. They touch on a delicate chapter of their personal history: the origins of their couple.
Emmanuel met Brigitte for the first time when he was in high school, in Amiens. She was 24 years his senior and married at the time. The complaint filed by the Macrons against Owens recalls that it is during the theater class taught by the teacher that the two "wove a deep intellectual link", the future president developing on this occasion "strong feelings for his teacher".
Their love affair, which flourished in the years that followed despite Emmanuel Macron's departure from Amiens to study in Paris, tore apart their respective families and ended Brigitte Macron's first marriage to André-Louis Auzière, the father of her three children, deceased since.
In an interview given to Paris Match in 2024, the First Lady's daughter, Tiphaine Auzière, described this period as "painful" for her family. Macron was a classmate of her sister, Laurence. "It was not yet the era of social networks, but we were in a small provincial town. Everything comes out," she recounts then.
The Macrons have provided only a few carefully chosen details about this period of their lives. The conspiracy theory adherents, whether in good or bad faith, have taken charge of filling the gaps. Up to analyzing the smallest details of Brigitte Macron's youth photos, from the shape of her ears to her resemblance to her brother. A central element of Poussard's book is a visual analysis carried out using a Chinese facial recognition tool, supposed to document the evolution of Brigitte Macron's physical features over time.
"This is what characterizes conspiracy theories: from nothing they make something," declares the famous lawyer and politician Eric Dupond-Moretti, who held the position of Justice Minister of Emmanuel Macron when these allegations began to circulate.
Tiphaine Auzière testified, during one of the trials held in France, of the consequences these allegations had on her mother's well-being.
"She is forced to pay attention to the outfits she wears, to her postures, because she knows that her image can be diverted," she said.
Social media posts relaying the theory have taken to highlighting close-ups of the First Lady's body, speculating on Brigitte Macron's silhouette or her way of moving.
"One feels that they have been wounded individually, very deeply," assures a politician close to the couple, who requested anonymity in order to be able to speak freely on this sensitive subject.
Freedom of expression
In January 2026, the Paris correctional court convicted ten people, including Amandine Roy, for cyberharassment against Brigitte Macron after having been found guilty of relaying malicious allegations about her gender and sexuality. The defendants received sentences ranging from awareness training to prison, for the most part suspended.
But the defamation proceedings brought against Amandine Roy and Nathalie Rey backfired against the presidential couple. After a favorable decision in the first instance, the court of appeal indeed estimated that the two women had acted in good faith, despite the use of sources whose "neutrality and seriousness are questionable",
