Ten convicted of online harassment against Brigitte Macron

A Paris court has convicted ten people for engaging in the online harassment of Brigitte Macron, the wife of France's leader, Emmanuel Macron.

The defendants faced allegations of spreading untruths regarding her gender and sexuality, in addition to posting hurtful comments about the pair's 24-year age gap.

The court handed down conditional custodial sentences of a maximum of eight months to the convicted individuals. The complete verdict has still to be made public.

A longstanding conspiracy theory suggesting that Brigitte Macron is a trans woman has existed since her husband's first electoral victory in 2017.

This latest legal outcome in France is concurrent with the Macrons initiating a legal action for defamation in the US against conservative commentator Candace Owens, who has also voiced comparable unfounded claims about the French president's wife's biological sex.

Their complaint states that Owens brushed aside all credible evidence disproving her claim opting to amplify the voices of notorious conspiracy peddlers.

Owens has often echoed these allegations on her show and social media channels, and in March 2024 proclaimed that she would stake her entire professional reputation on her insistence that Mrs. Macron was born a man.

Brigitte Macron initially encountered her current spouse when she worked as an educator at his high school.

The two entered into matrimony in 2007, when the man who would become president was 29 and she was in her mid-50s.