The couple seeks an unspecified amount in damages.
Conservative commentator and podcaster Candace Owens was sued for defamation on July 23 by French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, over Owens’s claim that France’s first lady is a man.
The couple filed the 22-count complaint in Delaware Superior Court against Owens, Candace Owens LLC, and her website operator, GeorgeTom Inc., seeking an unspecified amount in damages.
The lawsuit said that in March 2024, Owens “told the world she ‘would stake [her] entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man.’”
“Since then, Owens has used this false statement to promote her independent platform, gain notoriety, and make money,” the complaint said.
“Owens disregarded all credible evidence disproving her claim in favor of platforming known conspiracy theorists and proven defamers. And rather than engage with President and Mrs. Macron’s attempts to set the record straight, Owens mocked them and used them as additional fodder for her frenzied fan base.”
The lawsuit focuses on the eight-part podcast series “Becoming Brigitte,” helmed by Owens, which has more than 2 million views on YouTube, as well as X posts linked to it.
According to the Macron family, the series is based on “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions” about the Macrons, including that the first lady “was born a man, stole another person’s identity, and transitioned to become Brigitte.”
The complaint said the series also included the allegations that the Macrons are “blood relatives committing incest,” that the president was chosen to lead France “as part of the CIA-operated MKUltra program or a similar mind-control program,” and that the couple are “committing forgery, fraud, and abuses of power to conceal these secrets.”
“These claims are demonstrably false, and Owens knew they were false when she published them,” the lawsuit states. “Yet, she published them anyway. And the reason is clear: it is not the pursuit of truth, but the pursuit of fame.”
Owens acknowledged the lawsuit during an episode of her podcast on July 23 but said it is “littered with factual inaccuracies,” although she said she had not yet had time to read it all.
Brigitte Macron was a 39-year-old married mother of three when she met Emmanuel Macron—then a young teenager—while teaching at the high school he attended. The couple married in 2007.
The lawsuit stated that speculation regarding Brigitte Macron’s gender began surfacing on social media in 2021 and that it has since been discussed by influential commentators, including Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson.
The allegation included that Brigitte Macron was born a male named Jean-Michel Trogneux, the actual name of her older brother, the Macrons said.
Owens has perpetuated such “lies” in her series, the lawsuit stated.
“These lies have caused tremendous damage to the Macrons,” the complaint stated. “Defendants have subjected the Macrons to a campaign of global humiliation, turning their lives into fodder for profit-driven lies. 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 result is relentless bullying on a worldwide scale.”
The Macrons said that faced with this “relentless and unjustified smear campaign,” they were “left with no choice but to seek relief … to set the record straight, prevent further harm, and hold Defendants accountable for their conduct.”
In responding to the complaint, Owens said on her podcast that she was being “sued by the first lady man of France” and described the lawsuit as an “obvious and desperate public relations strategy.”
She said her lawyers had been speaking with lawyers for the Macrons since January but that the latter did not give Owens’s lawyers “a heads up that they were filing a lawsuit.”
A spokesperson for Owens said in a statement to the media that the lawsuit is an effort to bully her, after Brigitte Macron rejected Owens’s repeated requests for an interview.
“This is a foreign government attacking the First Amendment rights of an American independent journalist,” the spokesperson said.
This is not the first time Brigitte Macron has sued for defamation over claims that she was born male.
In 2021, France’s first lady sued two women, Amandine Roy and Natacha Rey, accusing them of spreading the allegation on social media.
A lower court in September 2024 found the two women guilty of defamation and ordered them to pay damages to both Brigitte Macron and her brother; however, a Paris appeals court overturned the convictions in July after finding that their comments did not constitute defamation and were made in good faith, representing free speech.
Brigitte Macron is currently appealing that decision with France’s highest court.
The French Embassy in the United States could not be reached for comment.
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