Ten individuals found guilty of cyber-bullying directed at Brigitte Macron

A court in Paris has ruled against ten people for perpetrating the cyber-bullying of Brigitte Macron, the wife of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron.

The defendants faced charges of circulating untruths regarding her gender identity and sexual orientation, in addition to making defamatory statements about the pair's age disparity of 24 years.

The court handed down conditional custodial sentences of as much as eight months to the perpetrators. The complete verdict has still to be made public.

A persistent conspiracy theory claiming that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman has existed since her husband's rise to the presidency in 2017.

This latest legal outcome in France comes as the Macrons initiating a legal action for defamation in the United States of America against right-wing influencer Candace Owens, who has repeatedly shared similar conspiracy theories about the first lady's gender.

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

Owens has regularly repeated these assertions on her podcast and online platforms, and in March 2024 stated 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 was a teacher at his lycée.

The pair married in 2007, when the man who would become president was 29 and she was in her mid-50s.