Ten individuals sentenced of online harassment targeting Brigitte Macron

A French judicial body has found guilty ten people for engaging in the digital intimidation of Brigitte Macron, the partner of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron.

The those on trial faced charges of disseminating false claims regarding her sex and sexuality, in addition to publishing hurtful comments about the husband and wife's significant age difference.

The court issued conditional custodial sentences of up to eight months to the perpetrators. The complete verdict has yet to be released.

A circulating conspiracy theory claiming that Brigitte Macron is a person assigned male at birth has existed since her husband's initial election in 2017.

This latest legal outcome in France is concurrent with the Macrons engaging in a defamation lawsuit in the United States of America against conservative commentator Candace Owens, who has repeatedly shared similar conspiracy theories about the first lady's gender.

Their lawsuit alleges that Owens ignored all credible evidence contradicting her allegations opting to platforming known conspiracy theorists.

Owens has regularly repeated these assertions on her podcast and social media channels, and in March 2024 stated that she would bet her whole career 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 secondary school.

The couple tied the knot in 2007, when the man who would become president was 29 and she was approximately 54 years old.