Ten sentenced of digital abuse targeting Brigitte Macron
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A French judicial body has convicted ten people for perpetrating the cyber-bullying of Brigitte Macron, the wife of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron.
The defendants faced allegations of spreading fabrications regarding her gender identity and sexuality, in addition to posting defamatory statements about the couple's significant age difference.
The court issued suspended jail terms of as much as eight months to the defendants. The full ruling has not yet been published.
A persistent conspiracy theory alleging that Brigitte Macron is a person assigned male at birth has existed since her husband's first electoral victory in 2017.
This latest legal outcome in France coincides with the Macrons pursuing a legal action for defamation in the US against right-wing influencer Candace Owens, who has repeatedly shared similar conspiracy theories about the first lady's identity.
Their complaint states that Owens brushed aside all credible evidence contradicting her allegations in favour of amplify the voices of notorious conspiracy peddlers.
Owens has frequently reiterated these allegations on her show and social networks, and in March 2024 declared that she would risk all her credibility on her insistence that Mrs. Macron was born a man.
Brigitte Macron initially encountered her now-husband when she taught at his high school.
The couple married in 2007, when the future French president was 29 and she was 54.
