Ten individuals convicted of digital abuse directed at Brigitte Macron
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A Paris court has convicted ten people for engaging in the cyber-bullying of Brigitte Macron, the wife of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron.
The defendants faced allegations of disseminating untruths regarding her gender and sexuality, in addition to publishing defamatory statements about the couple's 24-year age gap.
The court delivered suspended jail terms of as much as eight months to the defendants. The full ruling has still to be made public.
A longstanding conspiracy theory claiming that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman has been in circulation since her husband's first electoral victory in 2017.
This Monday's court decision in France coincides with the Macrons engaging in a defamation lawsuit in the US against conservative commentator Candace Owens, who has repeatedly shared analogous false narratives about the French president's wife's identity.
Their legal filing alleges that Owens ignored any factual proof disproving her claim opting to give a platform to established defamers.
Owens has regularly repeated these assertions on her podcast and social networks, and in March 2024 declared that she would bet her whole career on her conviction that Mrs. Macron is biologically male.
Brigitte Macron first met her current spouse when she taught at his secondary school.
The two married in 2007, when the future French president was 29 and she was 54.
