Ten individuals sentenced of digital abuse directed at Brigitte Macron

A Paris court has found guilty ten people for engaging in the cyber-bullying of Brigitte Macron, the spouse of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron.

The defendants faced accusations of circulating false claims regarding her gender identity and sexuality, in addition to publishing malicious remarks about the husband and wife's significant age difference.

The court issued suspended prison sentences of a maximum of eight months to the defendants. The detailed judgment has still to be made public.

A persistent false narrative suggesting that Brigitte Macron is a person assigned male at birth has been in circulation since her husband's first electoral victory in 2017.

This recent ruling in France coincides with the Macrons pursuing a libel case in the United States against right-wing influencer Candace Owens, who has likewise promoted similar conspiracy theories about the first lady's identity.

Their complaint contends that Owens disregarded all credible evidence disproving her claim choosing instead to amplify the voices of notorious conspiracy peddlers.

Owens has regularly repeated these assertions on her digital program and social networks, and in March 2024 declared that she would risk all her credibility on her insistence that Mrs. Macron is biologically male.

Brigitte Macron initially encountered her current spouse when she taught at his lycée.

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