10 people sentenced for claiming France’s first lady Brigitte Macron is transgender

Ten people were found guilty in France on Monday of cyberbullying first lady Brigitte Macron by posting false claims online that accused her of being transgender.

Delphine Jegousse, 51, also known as Amandine Roy, was sentenced to six months in prison, while eight other defendants were given suspended sentences of four to eight months. All were ordered to attend cyberbullying awareness training, and to pay 10,000 euros (about $11,675) in damages to Macron for their "particularly degrading, insulting, and malicious" comments.

“Repeated publications have had cumulative harmful effects,” the Paris court ruled, via The Associated Press.

Related: France's first lady Brigitte Macron awarded nearly $9,000 in damages after transvestigation

Roy and and co-conspirator Natacha Rey were previously ordered in 2024 to pay Macron €8,000 (about $8,864) over claims they made in a 2021 YouTube video that falsely asserted the first lady is actually her brother, and has secretly transitioned. The two were also ordered to pay €5,000 (about $5,540) to her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux, as well as a suspended fine of €500 (about $540). The ruling was later overturned on appeal.

The women's claims went viral just weeks before the French presidential election in 2022, prompting Macron to file a libel complaint. Despite successfully challenging the claims in court, the rumors continued to spread internationally, gaining even more traction when conservative commentator Candace Owens parroted them.

“After looking into this, I would stake my entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man," Owens wrote at the time. "Any journalist or publication that is trying to dismiss this plausibility is immediately identifiable as establishment. I have never seen anything like this in my life. The implications here are terrifying.”

Owens released in 2023 an eight-part YouTube series, Becoming Brigitte, repeating the conspiracy involving Macron's brother, as well as claiming that she and her husband are blood relatives. The series also bizarrely claimed that Emmanuel Macron was the result of a CIA human experimentation program, a reference to the debunked MKUltra project.

Related: French President Macron sues Candace Owens for defamation over claims his wife is transgender

After reportedly sending several cease-and-desists that went ignored, the Macrons filed a lawsuit against Owens in July that accused her of a “campaign of global humiliation" that is “invasive, dehumanizing, and deeply unjust.” They called the assertions "vile fabrications," and later submitted scientific evidence verifying that Macron is a cisgender woman.

“Owens has dissected their appearance, their marriage, their friends, their family, and their personal history — twisting it all into a grotesque narrative designed to inflame and degrade,” the lawsuit stated. “Faced with this relentless and unjustified smear campaign, the Macrons are left with no choice but to seek relief through this Court to set the record straight, prevent further harm, and hold Defendants accountable for their conduct."