Four men are scheduled to appear in Paris next year on charges of harassing French First Lady Brigitte Macron online, including calling her a “paedophile.” Recall that she has been attacked for being 24 years older than President Emmanual Macron, and that false information about her gender has been circulating on social media for years.
Authorities launched an investigation into cyberharassment and incitement to commit an offence after Brigitte Macron filed a complaint in August, according to the public prosecutor.
The prosecutors said that the hearing, scheduled for July of next year, will focus on “malicious comments about Brigitte Macron’s gender and sexuality, as well as her age difference with her husband… likening her to a paedophile.” There will be a trial at the end of October.
The president, 46, and his wife, 71, have a relationship that has garnered media attention both domestically and internationally. They met when she was a teacher and he was a teenager.
One of the defendants is Aurelien Poirson-Atlan, a 1984-born publicist who goes by “Zoe Sagan” on social media and is frequently associated with conspiracy theory groups. Poirson-Atlan’s attorney, Juan Branco, condemned the charges and said the public prosecutor was acting in a “clearly political manner.
” Disinformation posts on social media assert that the first lady, who was formerly Brigitte Trogneux, never existed and that her brother Jean-Michel had changed his gender and taken on that persona.
Online rumours were sparked by conspiracy theorists and the far right after a French court in September ordered two women to pay Macron 8,000 euros ($8,400) in damages for making a false claim that she was transgender.