ALBAWABA - Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron sue Candace Owens over defamation claims.
French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, sued right-wing podcaster Candace Owens in the US on Wednesday for defamation after she said Brigitte could be a man. The case has 22 counts.
A statement from the Macrons' lawyer, Tom Clare, says that the case filed in Delaware Superior Court says Owens has been running "a relentless year-long campaign of defamation against the Macrons."
rance's President Emmanuel Macron (R) and his wife Brigitte Macron (L) (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)
The complaint says that in March, right-wing commentator Candace Owens brought up an absurd conspiracy theory again in a YouTube video called "Is France's First Lady a Man?"
Owens called the conspiracy idea "likely the biggest scandal in political history," and he talked about it a lot on X.
Owens has made many videos about Brigitte Macron since then for her almost 4.5 million YouTube fans. One of these is a series called "Becoming Brigitte," which is made up of several videos.
The lawsuit also says that she sold things that supported the story.
Tom Clare, the Macrons' lawyer, said on Wednesday that they had asked Owens to stop making the claim for about a year and only sued her as a "last resort" when she stopped.
According to the lawsuit, Owens was the first person to tell the US media and people around the world about these false claims. The couple is suing for punitive damages and says they have been hurt "substantially economically," which means they have lost business chances in the future.
Owens shared a screenshot of a story about the Macrons' lawsuit on Instagram on Wednesday, along with a picture of the couple and the words, "I will be coming for this wig today." “Watch this space.”
Later, she made a video on YouTube in which she called the lawsuit "an obvious and desperate public relations strategy."
CNN has tried to get Owens to say something.
France's first lady Brigitte Macron (Photo by Mohammed BADRA / POOL / AFP)
Brigitte Macron also sued two French women in 2022 for making similar claims. CNN station BFMTV says the women won an appeal this year after winning the first case. The case will now go to a higher court.
The statement says Owens was asked to retract her claims along with "incontrovertible evidence disproving her allegations and proving, among other things, that Mrs. Macron was born a woman named Brigitte Trogneux, that she is not a blood relative of President Macron," and that the Macrons are not being manipulated or blackmailed by unknown forces through a program linked to the CIA.
The official complaint said that Owens used this false statement to promote her own brand, get attention, and make money.
