The couple seeks an unspecified quantity in damages.
Conservative commentator and podcaster Candace Owens was sued for defamation on July 23 by French President Emmanuel Macron and his spouse, Brigitte Macron, over Owens’s declare that France’s first woman is a person.
The couple filed the 22-count grievance in Delaware Superior Courtroom in opposition to Owens, Candace Owens LLC, and her web site operator, GeorgeTom Inc., in search of an unspecified quantity in damages.
The lawsuit stated 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 grievance stated.
“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 collection “Becoming Brigitte,” helmed by Owens, which has greater than 2 million views on YouTube, in addition to X posts linked to it.
In accordance with the Macron household, the collection relies on “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions” in regards to the Macrons, together with that the primary woman “was born a man, stole another person’s identity, and transitioned to become Brigitte.”
The grievance stated the collection additionally included the allegations that the Macrons are “blood relatives committing incest,” that the president was chosen to guide 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 throughout an episode of her podcast on July 23 however stated it’s “littered with factual inaccuracies,” though she stated she had not but had time to learn all of it.
Brigitte Macron was a 39-year-old married mom of three when she met Emmanuel Macron—then a younger teenager—whereas instructing at the highschool he attended. The couple married in 2007.
The lawsuit said that hypothesis relating to Brigitte Macron’s gender started surfacing on social media in 2021 and that it has since been mentioned by influential commentators, together with Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson.
The allegation included that Brigitte Macron was born a male named Jean-Michel Trogneux, the precise identify of her older brother, the Macrons stated.
Owens has perpetuated such “lies” in her collection, the lawsuit said.
“These lies have caused tremendous damage to the Macrons,” the grievance said. “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 stated that confronted with this “relentless and unjustified smear campaign,” they have been “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 grievance, Owens stated 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 stated her attorneys had been talking with attorneys for the Macrons since January however that the latter didn’t give Owens’s attorneys “a heads up that they were filing a lawsuit.”
A spokesperson for Owens stated in a press release 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 stated.
This isn’t the primary time Brigitte Macron has sued for defamation over claims that she was born male.
In 2021, France’s first woman sued two ladies, Amandine Roy and Natacha Rey, accusing them of spreading the allegation on social media.
A decrease court docket in September 2024 discovered the 2 ladies responsible of defamation and ordered them to pay damages to each Brigitte Macron and her brother; nonetheless, a Paris appeals court docket overturned the convictions in July after discovering that their feedback didn’t represent defamation and have been made in good religion, representing free speech.
Brigitte Macron is at the moment interesting that call with France’s highest court docket.
The French Embassy in america couldn’t be reached for remark.
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