Ten found guilty of cyber-bullying Brigitte Macron

A Paris court found ten people guilty of cyberbullying Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron.

The defendants were accused of making “malicious statements” regarding the 24-year age difference between the couple, as well as spreading false claims about the woman’s gender and sexuality.

Most of the defendants were given suspended sentences of up to eight months, but one was immediately imprisoned for failing to appear in court. Some of their social media accounts were suspended.

The judge said the eight men and two women acted with a clear desire to harm Brigitte Macron and used derogatory and derogatory remarks online.

Two of the defendants, independent journalist Natacha Rey and internet fortune-teller Amandine Roy, were convicted of libel in 2024 for claiming that the First Lady of France never existed.

They said that his brother Jean-Michel Trogneux had changed gender and started using his name.

They were later cleared on appeal. The appeals court’s argument in exonerating them was that saying someone had changed gender was not necessarily an “attack on their dignity.”

The Macrons are now taking this case to the supreme appeals court.

“The most important thing is courses on the prevention of perpetrators and the suspension of some accounts,” Brigitte Macron’s lawyer Jean Ennochi said after the decision was announced, according to the AFP news agency.

Monday’s ruling in France heralds a much larger lawsuit to be heard in the United States, where the Macrons have filed a defamation lawsuit against right-wing influencer Candace Owens, who has also voiced conspiracy theories about the first lady’s gender.

They claimed that he “ignored all credible evidence disproving his claim in favor of platforming known conspiracy theorists and proven slanderers.”

Owens has regularly repeated the allegations on his podcast and social media channels, and in March 2024 stated that he would base his “entire professional reputation” on his belief that Ms Macron was “actually a man”.

A conspiracy theory claiming that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman has been circulating since 2017, when her husband was first elected.

Brigitte Macron first met her now-husband when she was a secondary school teacher.

The couple married in 2007, when the future French president was 29 and he was in his mid-50s.