Eight men and two women were found guilty Monday in a Paris court of cyberbullying French first lady Brigitte Macron, multiple news outlets reported.
In addition to “malicious remarks” about the 24-year age gap between the first lady and President Emmanuel Macron, the defendants — including an elected official and a teacher — were accused of making false claims about Brigitte Macron’s gender and sexuality.
The judge said the group acted with a clear desire to do harm, pointing to “particularly degrading, insulting, and malicious” claims that Macron is transgender and a pedophile. The claims of pedophilia stem from the couple’s age gap and that Brigitte Macron was a teacher at the president’s secondary school when they first met.
Two of the defendants were previously found guilty of slander in 2024 for claiming Macron had never existed and that her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux, had transitioned and started using her name. They were later cleared, with the appeals court arguing that saying someone had transitioned was not an “attack on their honor.”
Eight of the defendants were given suspended sentences between four and eight months, while one was sentenced to six months in prison. All 10 were ordered to attend a training on cyberbullying awareness in addition to their sentences. Five were barred from X, the social media platform involved in the case, for six months.
The Paris trial is the latest in the Macrons’ legal battle against online harassment. The couple has also filed a defamation lawsuit in the U.S. against right-wing podcaster Candace Owens, who has repeated the claims about the first lady’s gender.
Owens said on her podcast in June that she would fight the lawsuit. She previously has said she would “stake [her] entire professional reputation” on the claims about Macron’s gender.
The first lady did not attend the two-day trial in October.
Before Monday’s verdict, she told French TV network TF1 the couple is pursuing legal action to set an example. “I want to help teenagers fight against bullying, and if I do not set an example, it will be difficult,” she said.
Kathleen Creedon is a platforms editor for MS NOW. She previously worked as a web producer for Vanity Fair.