French First Lady Brigitte Macron will reportedly be made to submit to a medical exam to prove she is a woman as part of an ongoing lawsuit involving conservative commentator Candace Owens.
Owens told the Daily Mail on Monday she is escalating the legal feud by demanding Mrs Macron undergoes a “third-party examination.”
“We’re going to demand Brigitte sit down for an exam with an independent doctor. We’re coming for her medical records,” Owens told the outlet.
French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife launched a 218-page defamation lawsuit against Owens through a Delaware court after she alleged the First Lady was born male.
The couple filed suit in July over “substantial reputational damage” against Owens addressing what they called repeated “falsehoods” by the podcaster that Mrs Macron is in fact secretly a man, as Breitbart News reported.
They describe Owens’ allegations as “outlandish, defamatory and far-fetched fictions” as made in a podcast series that drew millions of listeners.
Mrs Macron has since said she will present photographic evidence to court to prove she is a woman as part of her defamation lawsuit.
In her latest statement to the Daily Mail, Owens said the U.S. legal system has set demands involving evidence submitted to court:
This isn’t France, where Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron get to do whatever they want. This is America. You don’t get to skip discovery just because you’re a foreign world leader angry about a podcaster’s First Amendment rights.
The court-mandated discovery process does not allow Brigitte to just ‘submit’ evidence. The American court system isn’t some kangaroo court where leaders can just say whatever they want.
Evidence must be independently verified. During the discovery process, Brigitte will need to submit herself to a third-party medical examination.
As Breitbart News reported in March 2024, the Macron family decried the Owens allegations as “the same level as people who say the earth is flat or that we are governed by reptiles” and the French president himself called the idea “false and fabricated” as well as “frustrating.”
An image of Mrs Macron’s birth announcement from April 13, 1953, a photograph of her as a child with her family, and another photo from the day of her first wedding in 1974 were submitted as part of the defamation suit in July.
Mrs Macron, 72, was born Brigitte Trogneux in the northern French city of Amiens. She has three children from a previous marriage.
This is not the first time the Macrons have turned to the legal system to combat rumours about Brigitte’s gender.
In 2022, Mrs Macron filed a formal complaint for public defamation in France against freelance journalist Natacha Rey and self-described “medium” Amandine Roy.
The pair were convicted in 2023 by a French court of libel and were ultimately fined $2,600.
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