French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, have filed a defamation lawsuit against American conservative commentator Candace Owens over claims that the French First Lady was born as a man.
The first couple of France filed a 218-page lawsuit in the U.S. state of Delaware on Wednesday against Mrs Owens and her businesses, alleging that she has financially gained from making “demonstrably false” claims about Brigitte Macron being secretly transgender.
Owens has previously stated that she would stake her “entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man,” while claiming that Macron was, in fact, her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux, and had assumed the identity of Brigitte Marie-Claude Trogneux after changing her gender.
In a statement reported by the Financial Times, the Macrons said: “Because Ms Owens systematically reaffirmed these falsehoods in response to each of our attorneys’ repeated requests for a retraction, we ultimately concluded that referring the matter to a court of law was the only remaining avenue.”
Representing the pair, attorney Thomas Clare, of the defamation-focused Clare Locke law firm, told the paper that both President Macron and his wife are willing to personally travel to Delaware to attend a trial in person to seek punitive damages against the American podcaster.
“They believe it’s important to stand up for themselves… Owens has had multiple opportunities to do the right thing and in response she has only mocked them,” Clare said.
The FT noted, however, that the first couple of France may face an uphill battle, given the high legal bar set for defamation in the United States for public figures, which requires proof that there was “actual malice” on behalf of the person who made the claim. This means that they will need to prove that Owens knew that the information was false or had a reckless disregard for the truth.
It is not the first time that 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.
While the rumours first emerged in 2017 amid Macron’s first campaign for the presidency, the French leader first addressed the claims last year, describing them as “sexist” in nature and designed to deligitimise the “powerful woman” he is married to.
In addition to the issue of Brigitte Macron’s gender, the suit against Owens also denies that the French president had been manipulated by the CIA’s MKUltra programme, saying: “President Macron has not participated in, nor is he the product of, any government mind control programmes.”
The suit also said that the Macrons had written to Owens last December in which they “pointedly denied that the president was statutorily raped”. The filing claimed that although the couple had met while Emmanuel was a 15-year-old student in then 39-year-old Brigitte’s class, and admitted that they had formed a deep “intellectual connection”, their relationship “remained within the bounds of the law” and did not become romantic until years later.
Mrs Owens has not responded publicly to the suit at the time of this reporting.
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