Ten convicted of cyber-bullying directed at Brigitte Macron
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A court in Paris has convicted ten people for carrying out the online harassment of Brigitte Macron, the spouse of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron.
The defendants faced charges of circulating false claims regarding her gender and sexual orientation, in addition to making defamatory statements about the husband and wife's age disparity of 24 years.
The court handed down conditional custodial sentences of a maximum of eight months to the defendants. The complete verdict has not yet been published.
A longstanding false narrative alleging that Brigitte Macron is a person assigned male at birth has spread widely since her husband's rise to the presidency in 2017.
This Monday's court decision in France is concurrent with the Macrons initiating a libel case in the United States against conservative commentator Candace Owens, who has also voiced similar conspiracy theories about the Brigitte Macron's gender.
Their legal filing states that Owens disregarded any factual proof contradicting her allegations choosing instead to amplify the voices of notorious conspiracy peddlers.
Owens has regularly repeated these allegations on her digital program and social media channels, and in March 2024 proclaimed that she would stake her entire professional reputation on her conviction that Mrs. Macron was born a man.
Brigitte Macron initially encountered her now-husband when she was a teacher at his high school.
The pair entered into matrimony in 2007, when the then-29-year-old Emmanuel Macron was 29 and she was approximately 54 years old.
