French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, filed a 22-count civil complaint Wednesday accusing U.S. commentator Candace Owens of defamation and "false light" for repeatedly claiming France's first lady "is, in fact, a man."
What Happened: According to Reuters, the suit, lodged in Delaware Superior Court, says Owens has pushed the rumor since March 2024 "to promote her independent platform, gain notoriety, and make money."
According to the filing, Owens ignored three formal retraction demands and instead amplified the claim through an eight-part podcast titled "Becoming Brigitte" and a stream of posts on X. Owens also alleged that the Macrons are blood relatives and that a U.S. government mind‑control program installed Emmanuel Macron. Each assertion, the suit states, was "demonstrably false" and has caused "tremendous damage" to the couple's reputations.
According to the complaint, people began surfacing baseless speculation about Brigitte Macron’s gender in 2021, and popular podcasts hosted by Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan, who have many conservative followers, have discussed the topic.
The complaint seeks unspecified monetary damages and legal fees. The lawsuit is being handled by Clare Locke, the Virginia firm that secured Dominion Voting Systems' $787.5 million settlement with Fox News in 2023. “If ever there was a clear-cut case of defamation, this is it,” Tom Clare, an attorney for the Macrons, said in a statement to ABC.
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Owens, who has 6.9 million X followers and more than 4.5 million YouTube subscribers, dismissed the action as "a foreign government attacking the First Amendment rights of an American independent journalist" and vowed to address it on her show.
A spokesperson said she had repeatedly sought an interview with Brigitte Macron, but instead of offering a comment, “Brigitte is resorting to trying to bully a reporter into submission. In France, politicians can bully journalists, but this is not France. It’s America.”
Why It Matters: The Macrons' suit lands amid a recent surge of high-profile defamation claims in U.S. courts. President Donald Trump last week sued The Wall Street Journal for $10 billion over links to Jeffrey Epstein, a case that could potentially test press-freedom limits.
Macron, meanwhile, recently blasted Trump’s trade tariffs as "blackmail," a dispute which highlights the deepening trans-Atlantic culture clash now echoed in the Owens controversy.
Photo Courtesy: Frederic Legrand – COMEO on Shutterstock.com
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