A group of ten sentenced of online harassment directed at Brigitte Macron
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A Paris court has convicted ten people for engaging in the digital intimidation of Brigitte Macron, the wife of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron.
The accused individuals faced accusations of circulating false claims regarding her gender and sexual orientation, in addition to making defamatory statements about the pair's significant age difference.
The court delivered conditional custodial sentences of up to eight months to the perpetrators. The complete verdict has still to be made public.
A persistent unfounded claim alleging that Brigitte Macron is a person assigned male at birth has spread widely since her husband's initial election in 2017.
This recent ruling in France is concurrent with the Macrons initiating a defamation lawsuit in the US against political commentator Candace Owens, who has also voiced comparable unfounded claims about the Brigitte Macron's biological sex.
Their complaint alleges that Owens ignored all credible evidence that refuted her assertions in favour of platforming known conspiracy theorists.
Owens has regularly repeated these allegations on her podcast and social media channels, and in March 2024 declared that she would bet her whole career on her insistence that Mrs. Macron was born a man.
Brigitte Macron originally became acquainted with her current spouse when she was a teacher at his high school.
The two tied the knot in 2007, when the man who would become president was 29 and she was 54.