Ten people were found guilty earlier today for cyberharassment in connection with false claims that French First Lady Brigitte Macron is secretly a trans woman with the deadname Jean-Michel Trogneux.

The rumors have spread for years online and in French fascist media, amplified in the U.S. by far-right conspiracy theorist Candace Owens. Prosecutors framed the claims that Brigitte Macron was assigned male at birth and is a pedophile – she met her current husband, French President Emmanuel Macron, when he was 15 years old, and she was his 39-year-old teacher – as part of a disinformation campaign. The Macrons’ conjugal relationship started when Emmanuel Macron was an adult.

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The court described the messages the defendants posted online as “degrading, insulting, and malicious” and said that they were viewed tens of thousands of times.

“Repeated publications have had cumulative harmful effects,” the ruling stated.

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The defendants were comprised of eight men and two women, ages 41 to 65, according to the AP. Most of the defendants were given suspended sentences that ranged from four to eight months, while one was sentenced to six months. The court said that the sentences were proportional to the seriousness of the defendants’ comments.

The court did not make the defendants’ names public, but some have spoken out about the trial. Several of the defendants said in court that their comments were intended as humor or satire and they didn’t understand why they were being prosecuted. Most of the defendants had small social media followings, with one even joking in court that most of the views on his X account were from investigators connected to the cyberharassment case.

One defendant, a teacher, apologized in court and was not sentenced to prison. All of the defendants were ordered to get cyberbullying awareness training.

The defendant who got the harshest sentence – six months in prison – was a 51-year-old self-described psychic named Delphine Jegousse, who goes by “Amandine Roy” online. In November 2021, she and “independent journalist” Natacha Rey spread the rumor that Brigitte Macron is transgender in a four-hour YouTube video where Rey claimed that she had solid proof that the first lady is trans stashed away “in a sealed envelope, which was deposited with a lawyer with a well-known name.”

That video got 460,000 views before being deleted by YouTube, and #JeanMichelTrogneux – the name of Brigitte Macron’s brother that Rey claimed was actually Brigitte Macron’s deadname – trended multiple times on French Twitter as tens of thousands of tweets were sent with that hashtag. Even the Wikipedia page for “The Trogneux family” had to be put on semi-protected status because anonymous users kept changing it.

The claim first appeared in the French antisemitic newsletter Faits et Documents earlier in 2021.

Brigitte Macron’s daughter testified at the cyberbullying trial about the “deterioration” of her mother’s life because of the harassment. “I wanted to express what her life has been like since she suffered this hatred,” Tiphaine Auzière said in court. “I wouldn’t wish what she’s going through on anyone.”

She said that her mother started to control her appearance in public out of fear that people would see her as masculine and developed a “constant behavior of being on the alert.”

“She cannot ignore the horrible things said about her,” she testified.

According to Courthouse News Service, Roy was one of the only defendants in court today to hear the judge read the sentence. She read a magazine as announcements were made and shook her head as the sentences were read.

“What is important is that there are immediate cyberbullying awareness trainings, and for some of the defendants, a ban on using their social media accounts,” said Brigitte Macron’s lawyer after the ruling.

The Macrons sued Rey and Roy in France for defamation and won 13,000 euros (about $15,000) in damages before an appeals court overturned the ruling last year, saying that the women made a mistake in “good faith.”

The Macrons sued Owens in the U.S. for defamation after Owens spent years promoting the false claim that Brigitte Macron is secretly transgender.

“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 states.

“Owens published the series and related X posts with reckless disregard for the truth,” the lawsuit says. “Owens was repeatedly presented with credible, verifiable evidence disproving her claims — including documentation, public records, and direct outreach from the Macrons. Instead of correcting the record, she doubled down… Owens, fully aware of the truth, has not only declined to retract her statements but has actively expanded on them.”

Former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama has also been the subject of far-right rumors that she is transgender.

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