Ten individuals sentenced of digital abuse targeting Brigitte Macron
Photo credit
A French judicial body has found guilty ten people for engaging in the online harassment of Brigitte Macron, the partner of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron.
The those on trial faced accusations of circulating untruths regarding her sex and sexuality, in addition to making malicious remarks about the couple's significant age difference.
The court issued conditional custodial sentences of a maximum of eight months to the defendants. The complete verdict has still to be made public.
A longstanding unfounded claim claiming that Brigitte Macron is a person assigned male at birth has been in circulation since her husband's rise to the presidency in 2017.
This Monday's court decision in France coincides with the Macrons engaging in a legal action for defamation in the United States against right-wing influencer Candace Owens, who has also voiced analogous false narratives about the French president's wife's identity.
Their complaint alleges that Owens brushed aside substantial counter-evidence disproving her claim opting to amplify the voices of notorious conspiracy peddlers.
Owens has regularly repeated these claims on her podcast and social networks, and in March 2024 stated that she would risk all her credibility on her conviction that Mrs. Macron is biologically male.
Brigitte Macron initially encountered her future husband when she taught at his secondary school.
The couple tied the knot in 2007, when the future French president was 29 and she was approximately 54 years old.
