A group of ten convicted of online harassment targeting Brigitte Macron
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A Paris court has ruled against ten people for carrying out the online harassment of Brigitte Macron, the wife of France's leader, Emmanuel Macron.
The those on trial faced accusations of spreading false claims regarding her gender identity and sexual orientation, in addition to making malicious remarks about the couple's significant age difference.
The court handed down suspended jail terms of up to eight months to the defendants. The detailed judgment has not yet been published.
A longstanding 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 latest legal outcome in France is concurrent with the Macrons initiating a defamation lawsuit in the United States against political commentator Candace Owens, who has likewise promoted similar conspiracy theories about the French president's wife's gender.
Their legal filing states that Owens ignored substantial counter-evidence contradicting her allegations in favour of give a platform to established defamers.
Owens has often echoed these assertions on her show and online platforms, and in March 2024 stated that she would stake her entire professional reputation on her insistence that Mrs. Macron was born a man.
Brigitte Macron first met her future husband when she worked as an educator at his lycée.
The pair entered into matrimony in 2007, when the future French president was 29 and she was approximately 54 years old.
