Ten individuals found guilty of online harassment against 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 France's leader, Emmanuel Macron.
The defendants faced allegations of disseminating fabrications regarding her sex and sexuality, in addition to making malicious remarks about the husband and wife's age disparity of 24 years.
The court delivered conditional custodial sentences of up to eight months to the convicted individuals. The complete verdict has yet to be released.
A longstanding conspiracy theory claiming that Brigitte Macron is a person assigned male at birth has spread widely since her husband's first electoral victory in 2017.
This latest legal outcome in France comes as the Macrons engaging in a legal action for defamation in the United States against political commentator Candace Owens, who has also voiced comparable unfounded claims about the French president's wife's identity.
Their legal filing alleges that Owens brushed aside all credible evidence contradicting her allegations choosing instead to platforming known conspiracy theorists.
Owens has regularly repeated these claims on her show and online platforms, and in March 2024 declared that she would risk all her credibility on her insistence that Mrs. Macron is in fact a man.
Brigitte Macron initially encountered her now-husband when she was a teacher at his high school.
The two married in 2007, when the then-29-year-old Emmanuel Macron was 29 and she was in her mid-50s.
