Ten individuals found guilty of online harassment targeting Brigitte Macron
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A Paris court has ruled against ten people for perpetrating the online harassment of Brigitte Macron, the wife of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron.
The those on trial faced allegations of spreading false claims regarding her gender and sexual orientation, in addition to publishing malicious remarks about the husband and wife's age disparity of 24 years.
The court delivered suspended prison sentences of up to eight months to the perpetrators. The full ruling has still to be made public.
A longstanding unfounded claim alleging that Brigitte Macron is a person assigned male at birth has been in circulation since her husband's initial election in 2017.
This recent ruling in France coincides with the Macrons pursuing a legal action for defamation in the United States against political commentator Candace Owens, who has also voiced analogous false narratives about the French president's wife's biological sex.
Their lawsuit contends that Owens brushed aside substantial counter-evidence disproving her claim opting to amplify the voices of notorious conspiracy peddlers.
Owens has often echoed these claims on her podcast and social media channels, and in March 2024 stated that she would stake her entire professional reputation on her insistence that Mrs. Macron was born a man.
Brigitte Macron first met her now-husband when she worked as an educator at his lycée.
The couple entered into matrimony in 2007, when the man who would become president was 29 and she was in her mid-50s.
