Ten individuals sentenced of online harassment against Brigitte Macron

A court in Paris has convicted ten people for perpetrating the cyber-bullying of Brigitte Macron, the partner of French President, Emmanuel Macron.

The accused individuals faced accusations of disseminating false claims regarding her gender and sexuality, in addition to publishing malicious remarks about the pair's age disparity of 24 years.

The court issued suspended prison sentences of as much as eight months to the perpetrators. The full ruling has yet to be released.

A persistent unfounded claim claiming that Brigitte Macron is a trans woman has spread widely since her husband's initial election in 2017.

This latest legal outcome in France is concurrent with the Macrons initiating a defamation lawsuit in the US against right-wing influencer Candace Owens, who has repeatedly shared comparable unfounded claims about the first lady's gender.

Their lawsuit states that Owens ignored all credible evidence disproving her claim in favour of platforming known conspiracy theorists.

Owens has regularly repeated these assertions on her show and online platforms, and in March 2024 declared that she would risk all her credibility on her insistence that Mrs. Macron was born a man.

Brigitte Macron originally became acquainted with her now-husband when she was a teacher at his secondary school.

The two tied the knot in 2007, when the future French president was 29 and she was approximately 54 years old.