{"id":127930,"date":"2026-01-05T19:03:42","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T19:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/ten-found-guilty-of-cyber-bullying-brigitte-macron\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T19:03:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T19:03:42","slug":"ten-found-guilty-of-cyber-bullying-brigitte-macron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/ten-found-guilty-of-cyber-bullying-brigitte-macron\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten found guilty of cyber-bullying Brigitte Macron"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARIS, Jan 5 \u2013 Ten people have been found guilty of cyber-bullying Brigitte Macron, the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, by a Paris court.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The defendants were accused of spreading false claims about her gender and sexuality, as well as making \u201cmalicious remarks\u201d about the 24-year age gap between the couple.<\/p>\n

Most of the defendants were handed suspended prison sentences of up to eight months, but one was jailed immediately for failing to attend court. Some had their social media accounts suspended.<\/p>\n

The judge said the eight men and two women had acted with a clear desire to do harm to Brigitte Macron, making remarks online that were degrading and insulting.<\/p>\n

Two of the defendants \u2013 self-styled independent journalist Natacha Rey and internet fortune-teller Amandine Roy \u2013 were found guilty of slander in 2024 for claiming that France\u2019s first lady had never existed.<\/p>\n

They said her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux had changed gender and started using her name.<\/p>\n

They were later cleared on appeal. The argument used by the appeals court in clearing them was that saying someone had changed gender was not necessarily an \u201cattack on their honour\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Macrons are now taking that case to the high court of appeal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important things are the prevention courses and the suspension of some of the accounts\u201d of the perpetrators, Jean Ennochi, Brigitte Macron\u2019s lawyer, said after the verdict was handed down, the AFP news agency reported.<\/p>\n

Tiphaine Auzi\u00e8re, Brigitte Macron\u2019s daughter from a previous marriage, previously told the trial that the cyber-bullying had negatively affected her mother\u2019s health and living conditions.<\/p>\n

She said her mother \u201chas had to be careful about her choices of outfits, of posture\u2026 she knows perfectly well that her image will be used to back these theories\u201d.<\/p>\n

While her mother had \u201clearned to live with it\u201d, Auzi\u00e8re said, she suffered from the repercussions on her grandchildren who were taunted at school.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s ruling in France is a forerunner of a much bigger trial due in the US, where the Macrons have filed a defamation lawsuit against right-wing influencer Candace Owens, who has also voiced conspiracy theories about the first lady\u2019s gender.<\/p>\n

They alleged that she \u201cdisregarded all credible evidence disproving her claim in favour of platforming known conspiracy theorists and proven defamers\u201d.<\/p>\n

Owens has regularly repeated the claims on her podcast and social media channels, and in March 2024 stated that she would stake her \u201centire professional reputation\u201d on her belief that the first lady \u201cis in fact a man\u201d.<\/p>\n

The presidential couple were initially advised that the best course was to ignore the online gossip, because to go to law would simply amplify it.<\/p>\n

But last year there was a radical change of course.<\/p>\n

The Macrons decided that the scale of the online attacks was now too large to ignore. So, at risk of exposing their private selves in a US court, they determined to push back against the conspiracy theorists.<\/p>\n

A conspiracy theory claiming that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman has circulated since her husband was first elected in 2017.<\/p>\n

Brigitte Macron first met her now-husband when she was a teacher at his secondary school.<\/p>\n

The couple married in 2007, when the future French president was 29 and she was in her mid-50s.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PARIS, Jan 5 \u2013 Ten people have been found guilty of cyber-bullying Brigitte Macron, the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, by a Paris court. The defendants were accused of spreading false claims about her gender and sexuality, as well as making \u201cmalicious remarks\u201d about the 24-year age gap between the couple. Most of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}