PARIS — A court on Monday convicted 10 people of aggravated online harassment in a cyberbullying campaign that targeted French first lady Brigitte Macron. The defendants were found to have spread false claims about Brigitte Macron’s gender and posted malicious remarks about her private life, Jan. 5, 2026.
The Paris criminal court said the group’s posts and reposts aimed at Brigitte Macron crossed the line from commentary into harassment. Penalties ranged from fines and mandatory training to prison terms, with one defendant who skipped the hearings sentenced to six months in prison and others receiving suspended jail terms of up to eight months, Reuters reported.
All 10 were ordered to complete a cyberbullying awareness course, and several were temporarily barred from the social platforms they used, according to the Associated Press. Judges also rejected a “satire” defense raised by some defendants.
What the ruling means for Brigitte Macron
For Brigitte Macron, the verdict is a rare moment of legal accountability in a conspiracy narrative that began circulating in 2021 and has since travelled well beyond France. In a TV interview broadcast Sunday, Brigitte Macron said she pursued the case to “set an example” and pointed to the personal toll of identity-based attacks, including “people who broke into my tax website and modified my identity,” The Guardian reported.
The posts promoted the false claim that Brigitte Macron was born under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux — the actual name of her older brother — and some tried to link the 24-year age gap between Brigitte Macron and President Emmanuel Macron to accusations of criminality. Brigitte Macron’s daughter, Tiphaine Auzière, told the court the harassment had damaged her mother’s health and reached the next generation through taunts at school.
At the courthouse, one convicted defendant, art gallery owner Bertrand Scholler, said he would appeal and called the decision “abominable,” adding: “Freedom of speech no longer exists.”
How the Brigitte Macron cyber-harassment case built over time
Monday’s ruling follows several years of litigation over the same rumor. In September 2024, a Paris court ordered two women to pay damages for defamation after they spread the false claim that Brigitte Macron is transgender, Le Monde reported. The dispute continued through appeals, keeping the story alive in online communities even as courts rejected its factual basis.
The Macrons also escalated their response abroad in July 2025, filing a U.S. defamation lawsuit against conservative podcaster Candace Owens over similar claims, Reuters reported in its earlier coverage.
The cyber harassment case that ended with Monday’s convictions began after Brigitte Macron filed a complaint in August 2024 and investigators made arrests months later; the 10 defendants went on trial in October 2025 and faced up to two years in prison, according to Reuters’ reporting ahead of the hearings.
A warning shot for online mobs
French prosecutors have argued that coordinated pile-ons can do real harm even when the participants never meet. Euronews reported the court cited comments it described as “particularly degrading, insulting and malicious.” The verdict is unlikely to end the rumor, but it signals that courts are increasingly willing to treat organized online abuse as a prosecutable offense — especially when it targets someone’s identity and spills into real-world intimidation.
