Ten convicted of online harassment targeting Brigitte Macron

A Paris court has ruled against ten people for engaging in the online harassment of Brigitte Macron, the wife of French President, Emmanuel Macron.

The defendants faced accusations of spreading fabrications regarding her gender and sexual orientation, in addition to publishing malicious remarks about the pair's age disparity of 24 years.

The court delivered suspended prison sentences of a maximum of eight months to the convicted individuals. The full ruling has not yet been published.

A longstanding unfounded claim suggesting that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman has been in circulation since her husband's rise to the presidency in 2017.

This recent ruling in France is concurrent with the Macrons engaging in a legal action for defamation in the US against conservative commentator Candace Owens, who has repeatedly shared comparable unfounded claims about the French president's wife's gender.

Their lawsuit alleges that Owens disregarded all credible evidence that refuted her assertions opting to platforming known conspiracy theorists.

Owens has often echoed these allegations on her show and social networks, and in March 2024 proclaimed that she would risk all her credibility on her belief that Mrs. Macron was born a man.

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

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