Ten individuals sentenced of online harassment targeting Brigitte Macron

A Paris court has ruled against ten people for carrying out the digital intimidation of Brigitte Macron, the spouse of France's leader, Emmanuel Macron.

The defendants faced allegations of disseminating false claims regarding her gender and sexual orientation, in addition to posting defamatory statements about the pair's significant age difference.

The court issued suspended prison sentences of a maximum of eight months to the convicted individuals. The full ruling has yet to be released.

A circulating unfounded claim alleging that Brigitte Macron is a person assigned male at birth has existed since her husband's initial election in 2017.

This recent ruling in France coincides with the Macrons engaging in a libel case in the United States against political commentator Candace Owens, who has repeatedly shared analogous false narratives about the French president's wife's gender.

Their legal filing states that Owens brushed aside substantial counter-evidence disproving her claim opting to give a platform to established defamers.

Owens has regularly repeated these assertions on her show and social networks, and in March 2024 declared that she would risk all her credibility on her conviction that Mrs. Macron is in fact a man.

Brigitte Macron first met her future husband when she worked as an educator at his lycée.

The pair tied the knot in 2007, when the future French president was 29 and she was 54.