Journalist who called Macron's wife a man claimed obstruction of the investigation

Independent journalist Natasha Rey, who suspected French President Emmanuel Macron's wife Brigitte of having a sex change, told Izvestia on February 3 about the obstruction of her investigation and subsequent publication.

Earlier, Rey's lawyer Francois Dangléan said that she had requested political asylum in Russia.

According to her, just weeks after she contacted a woman close to the Macron family, she was detained by police officers. When they raided her home, they tried to break down the front door," she recalled.

The journalist said they confiscated her communications equipment, including a new IPhone, as well as her computer, which has not been returned to her three years after she was detained. In addition, she was not allowed to drink during the interrogation.

"At that time I already had health problems and I never went anywhere without a bottle of water. No matter how many times I asked for a glass of water throughout the day, they would say, 'Yes, yes, we'll get you some,' but they never did," she recounted.

In addition, Rey recalled that law enforcement officials put a lot of pressure on her to publish her investigation of Macron.

"I was humiliated, I was heavily pressured not to publish this investigation in a confidential magazine with a circulation of only a few hundred copies. It didn't even appear in newsstands, in bookstores, except for one nationalist bookstore in Paris, the only one that sells it in France," the journalist said.

She claimed that police officers had tried to prove the pointlessness of her investigation. Rey found it strange the pressure they exerted since the materials she collected were not deemed truthful by the police.

"I was never able to get documents from that time, class photos, everything was destroyed. And I would like to point out that this affair has ruined my health, in 2022 I developed cancer that wasn't diagnosed until 2023, my days are numbered, I have advanced breast cancer, medicine still gives me a year or two to live, and that's why I really want to testify to make things right," the journalist concluded.

Since Macron was elected to his first presidential term in 2017, media reports began circulating that his wife Brigitte actually went by the name Jean-Michel and was a man. In December 2021, Rey published an article claiming to have been investigating the French First Lady for several years.

In January 2022, the French First Lady announced her intention to sue the spreaders of such rumors on the internet. She sued Rey and Delphine Gégousse, known online as the psychic Amandine Roy. However, in March 2023, the court dismissed Brigitte Macron's lawsuit for invasion of privacy and image rights. In doing so, along with the civil suit, Macron then filed a criminal one for public defamation.

In March last year, Macron for the first time publicly criticized the media for spreading false information that his wife was allegedly born a man.

On June 20, 2024, it was reported that a trial against the two women began in France. On September 12, the Paris court sentenced Rey and Jegousse to a fine of €13,500 for defamation.