Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte have filed a defamation lawsuit against American podcaster Candace Owens, who alleged that the French president’s spouse was previously male.
The 218-page complaint was filed Wednesday in Delaware Superior Court against Owens, who commands millions of followers across X and YouTube. The lawsuit seeks a jury trial and unspecified punitive damages.
According to their legal statement, the Macrons pursued litigation after Owens repeatedly refused requests to retract what they termed false and defamatory statements made in an eight-part series titled “Becoming Brigitte” across YouTube and podcast platforms.
The Macrons allege the series contained “verifiably false and devastating lies,” including claims that Brigitte assumed another person’s identity and underwent gender transition, and that the couple are blood relatives engaged in incest.
Their complaint addresses the circumstances of how the couple met when the current 47-year-old president was a high school student and Brigitte served as his teacher, stating their relationship “remained within the bounds of the law.”
“Owens’ campaign of defamation was plainly designed to harass and cause pain to us and our families and to garner attention and notoriety,” the Macrons stated. “We gave her every opportunity to back away from these claims, but she refused. It is our earnest hope that this lawsuit will set the record straight and end this campaign of defamation once and for all.”
Owens responded during her Wednesday podcast, calling the lawsuit “littered with factual inaccuracies” and describing it as an “obvious and desperate public relations strategy” to damage her reputation. She claimed ignorance of the pending lawsuit despite ongoing lawyer communications since January.
An Owens spokesperson characterized the lawsuit as intimidation following Brigitte’s rejection of interview requests. “This is a foreign government attacking the First Amendment rights of an American independent journalist,” the spokesperson declared.
This case represents unusual legal territory for world leaders pursuing defamation claims. President Donald Trump has similarly utilized courts, including a $10bn lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over allegations he created inappropriate birthday content for Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. The Journal maintains confidence in defending its reporting.
Trump recently secured a $15m settlement with Disney-owned ABC regarding inaccurate reporting that characterized a jury finding as rape liability rather than sexual assault in civil proceedings.
US defamation law requires public figures to demonstrate “actual malice” – a stringent standard demanding proof that defendants knowingly published false information or displayed reckless disregard for truth.
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