A 28-year-old man has been sentenced to four months in prison for slapping French President Emmanuel Macron.
Damien T, 28, was sentenced to 18 months in prison by the court. 14 of those months, however, were suspended.
Mr. T attacked Macron while he was shaking hands with members of the public during a walkabout in France’s Drome region.
Video footage showed his security team instantly intervening and moving the leader away from his assailant.
T claimed that he had considered tossing an egg or a cream pastry at Macron several days before his visit to the region. He did stress, though, that the slap was not deliberate.
T was charged with assaulting a public employee, which carries a potential sentence of three years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros.
With less than a year until the next presidential election, the president was on a trip to the Drome region in the southeast to assess the country’s pulse in the aftermath of the pandemic.
T, along with a second man from his hometown of Saint-Vallier, was apprehended.