Ten individuals found guilty of online harassment against Brigitte Macron
Image source
A court in Paris has found guilty ten people for engaging in the online harassment of Brigitte Macron, the partner of France's leader, Emmanuel Macron.
The those on trial faced accusations of spreading fabrications regarding her gender identity and sexuality, in addition to publishing malicious remarks about the pair's age disparity of 24 years.
The court delivered conditional custodial sentences of as much as eight months to the defendants. The detailed judgment has not yet been published.
A persistent false narrative suggesting that Brigitte Macron is a trans woman has spread widely since her husband's rise to the presidency in 2017.
This Monday's court decision in France is concurrent with the Macrons initiating a defamation lawsuit in the United States of America against conservative commentator Candace Owens, who has likewise promoted similar conspiracy theories about the French president's wife's biological sex.
Their legal filing states that Owens disregarded any factual proof disproving her claim choosing instead to give a platform to established defamers.
Owens has often echoed these allegations on her show and online platforms, and in March 2024 proclaimed that she would risk all her credibility on her belief that Mrs. Macron was born a man.
Brigitte Macron initially encountered her current spouse when she worked as an educator at his secondary school.
The two tied the knot in 2007, when the then-29-year-old Emmanuel Macron was 29 and she was 54.
