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French President Emmanuel Macron and First Lady Brigitte Macron have filed a defamation lawsuit in the United States against right-wing commentator and podcaster, Candace Owens, over claims that the First Lady is biologically male.
Reuters reports that filed in the Delaware Superior Court on Wednesday, the lawsuit accuses Owens of waging a “campaign of global humiliation” to promote her podcast and grow her following.
According to the complaint, Owens falsely claimed that Brigitte Macron, 72, was born under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux — the name of her older brother.
“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 complaint reads. “The result is relentless bullying on a worldwide scale.”
Owens, in a podcast aired the same day, dismissed the lawsuit as “littered with factual inaccuracies” and labelled it a “desperate public relations strategy” aimed at discrediting her. She also claimed she had not been informed of the lawsuit, although lawyers from both sides had reportedly been in communication since January.
A spokesperson for Owens described the suit as an attempt to silence her after Brigitte Macron declined multiple interview requests.
The case echoes a broader trend of high-profile defamation lawsuits in the U.S. In a separate matter, former President Donald Trump is suing The Wall Street Journal for $10 billion, alleging it falsely linked him to a lewd birthday message allegedly created for the late financier, Jeffrey Epstein. The Journal has pledged to defend its reporting.
Trump recently settled a separate defamation suit with Walt Disney-owned ABC for $15 million. That case stemmed from an erroneous on-air claim suggesting a jury had found him liable for rape, rather than sexual assault.
Under U.S. law, public figures must meet a high bar to succeed in defamation cases, proving that false statements were made with “actual malice” — meaning they were knowingly false or made with reckless disregard for the truth.
Candace Owens commands a large following on social media, with more than 6.9 million followers on X (formerly Twitter) and over 4.5 million subscribers on YouTube.
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