Ten sentenced of online harassment targeting Brigitte Macron

A court in Paris has convicted ten people for carrying out the digital intimidation of Brigitte Macron, the wife of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron.

The defendants faced accusations of circulating false claims regarding her gender and sexual orientation, in addition to publishing defamatory statements about the couple's 24-year age gap.

The court handed down suspended jail terms of as much as eight months to the perpetrators. The full ruling has not yet been published.

A circulating unfounded claim claiming that Brigitte Macron is a person assigned male at birth has been in circulation since her husband's rise to the presidency in 2017.

This latest legal outcome in France is concurrent with the Macrons engaging in a libel case in the United States against right-wing influencer Candace Owens, who has likewise promoted comparable unfounded claims about the French president's wife's identity.

Their lawsuit alleges that Owens disregarded substantial counter-evidence contradicting her allegations opting to amplify the voices of notorious conspiracy peddlers.

Owens has regularly repeated these assertions on her podcast and online platforms, and in March 2024 proclaimed that she would stake her entire professional reputation on her conviction that Mrs. Macron is biologically male.

Brigitte Macron initially encountered her future husband when she worked as an educator at his high school.

The pair tied the knot in 2007, when the man who would become president was 29 and she was in her mid-50s.