Ten sentenced of online harassment against Brigitte Macron
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A French judicial body has ruled against ten people for perpetrating the digital intimidation of Brigitte Macron, the partner of France's leader, Emmanuel Macron.
The defendants faced allegations of circulating false claims regarding her gender and sexual orientation, in addition to publishing hurtful comments about the couple's significant age difference.
The court delivered conditional custodial sentences of as much as eight months to the convicted individuals. The complete verdict has still to be made public.
A persistent conspiracy theory alleging that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman has been in circulation since her husband's first electoral victory in 2017.
This recent ruling in France comes as the Macrons engaging in a libel case in the US against right-wing influencer Candace Owens, who has repeatedly shared similar conspiracy theories about the first lady's identity.
Their legal filing contends that Owens brushed aside all credible evidence disproving her claim choosing instead to give a platform to established defamers.
Owens has often echoed these assertions on her podcast and online platforms, and in March 2024 proclaimed 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 secondary school.
The pair married in 2007, when the then-29-year-old Emmanuel Macron was 29 and she was approximately 54 years old.
