Ten individuals sentenced of online harassment directed at Brigitte Macron
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A court in Paris has ruled against ten people for engaging in the online harassment of Brigitte Macron, the wife of France's leader, Emmanuel Macron.
The defendants faced allegations of spreading false claims regarding her gender and sexual orientation, in addition to publishing defamatory statements about the couple's age disparity of 24 years.
The court handed down conditional custodial sentences of as much as eight months to the convicted individuals. The detailed judgment has still to be made public.
A circulating unfounded claim claiming that Brigitte Macron is a person assigned male at birth has existed since her husband's initial election in 2017.
This latest legal outcome in France is concurrent with the Macrons pursuing a legal action for defamation in the United States of America against conservative commentator Candace Owens, who has likewise promoted analogous false narratives about the Brigitte Macron's identity.
Their legal filing contends that Owens brushed aside all credible evidence contradicting her allegations choosing instead to amplify the voices of notorious conspiracy peddlers.
Owens has frequently reiterated these claims on her podcast and social networks, and in March 2024 stated that she would stake her entire professional reputation on her insistence that Mrs. Macron is in fact a man.
Brigitte Macron first met her future husband when she worked as an educator at his high school.
The pair married in 2007, when the then-29-year-old Emmanuel Macron was 29 and she was in her mid-50s.
