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 Court docket in opposition to Owens, Candace Owens LLC, and her web site operator, GeorgeTom Inc., looking for an unspecified quantity in damages.
The lawsuit stated that in March 2024, Owens “advised the world she ‘would stake [her] whole skilled fame on the truth that Brigitte Macron is in actual fact a person.’”
“Since then, Owens has used this false assertion to advertise her impartial platform, achieve notoriety, and earn cash,” the grievance stated.
“Owens disregarded all credible proof disproving her declare in favor of platforming identified conspiracy theorists and confirmed defamers. And moderately than have interaction with President and Mrs. Macron’s makes an attempt to set the document straight, Owens mocked them and used them as further fodder for her frenzied fan base.”
The lawsuit focuses on the eight-part podcast collection “Changing into Brigitte,” helmed by Owens, which has greater than 2 million views on YouTube, in addition to X posts linked to it.
In line with the Macron household, the collection is predicated on “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions” in regards to the Macrons, together with that the primary woman “was born a person, stole one other particular person’s identification, and transitioned to change into Brigitte.”
The grievance stated the collection additionally included the allegations that the Macrons are “blood kin committing incest,” that the president was chosen to steer France “as a part of the CIA-operated MKUltra program or the same mind-control program,” and that the couple are “committing forgery, fraud, and abuses of energy to hide these secrets and techniques.”
“These claims are demonstrably false, and Owens knew they had been false when she printed them,” the lawsuit states. “But, she printed them anyway. And the reason being clear: it’s not the pursuit of fact, however the pursuit of fame.”
Owens acknowledged the lawsuit throughout an episode of her podcast on July 23 however stated it’s “affected by 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 acknowledged 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 title of her older brother, the Macrons stated.
Owens has perpetuated such “lies” in her collection, the lawsuit acknowledged.
“These lies have prompted great injury to the Macrons,” the grievance acknowledged. “Defendants have subjected the Macrons to a marketing campaign of world humiliation, turning their lives into fodder for profit-driven lies. Owens has dissected their look, their marriage, their associates, their household, and their private historical past—twisting all of it right into a grotesque narrative designed to inflame and degrade. The result’s relentless bullying on a worldwide scale.”
The Macrons stated that confronted with this “relentless and unjustified smear marketing campaign,” they had been “left with no alternative however to hunt reduction … to set the document straight, forestall additional hurt, and maintain Defendants accountable for his or her conduct.”
In responding to the grievance, Owens stated on her podcast that she was being “sued by the primary woman man of France” and described the lawsuit as an “apparent and determined public relations technique.”
She stated her legal professionals had been talking with legal professionals for the Macrons since January however that the latter didn’t give Owens’s legal professionals “a heads up that they had been submitting 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 can be a overseas authorities attacking the First Modification rights of an American impartial 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; nevertheless, a Paris appeals court docket overturned the convictions in July after discovering that their feedback didn’t represent defamation and had been made in good religion, representing free speech.
Brigitte Macron is at present interesting that call with France’s highest court docket.
The French Embassy in america couldn’t be reached for remark.
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