French president Macron sues right-wing podcaster over claim France's first lady was born male

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte filed a defamation lawsuit in the US yesterday  (23 July) against right-wing influencer and podcaster Candace Owens, centred on her claim that France's first lady is male.

The Macrons said in a complaint filed in Delaware Superior Court that Owens has waged a lie-filled "campaign of global humiliation" to promote her podcast and expand her "frenzied" fan base.

These lies included that Brigitte Macron, 72, was born under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux, the actual name of her older brother, the Macrons said.

"Owens has dissected their appearance, their marriage, their friends, their family, and their personal history — twisting it all into a grotesque narrative designed to inflame and degrade," the complaint said.

"The result," the complaint added, "is relentless bullying on a worldwide scale."

In her podcast yesterday, Owens said, "This lawsuit is littered with factual inaccuracies," and part of an "obvious and desperate public relations strategy" to smear her character.

Owens also said she did not know a lawsuit was coming, though lawyers for both sides had been communicating since January.

A spokesperson for Owens called the lawsuit itself an effort to bully her, after Brigitte Macron rejected Owens' repeated requests for an interview.

"This is a foreign government attacking the First Amendment rights of an American independent journalist," the spokesperson said.

In a joint statement released by their lawyers, the Macrons said they sued after Owens rejected three demands that she retract defamatory statements.

"Ms. Owens's campaign of defamation was plainly designed to harass and cause pain to us and our families and to garner attention and notoriety," the Macrons said. "We gave her every opportunity to back away from these claims, but she refused."

High legal standard

Yesterday's lawsuit is a rare case of a world leader suing for defamation.

US President Donald Trump has also turned to the courts, including in a $10 billion lawsuit accusing The Wall Street Journal of defaming him by claiming he created a lewd birthday greeting for disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.

The Journal said it would defend against that case and had full confidence in its reporting.

In December, meanwhile, Trump reached a $15 million settlement with Walt Disney-owned ABC over an inaccurate claim that a jury found him liable for rape, rather than sexual assault, in a civil lawsuit.

To prevail in US defamation cases, public figures must show defendants engaged in "actual malice," a tough legal standard requiring proof the defendants knew what they published was false or had reckless disregard for its truth.

Owens has more than 6.9 million followers on X and more than 4.5 million YouTube subscribers.

Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan

The Macrons' lawsuit focuses on the eight-part podcast "Becoming Brigitte," which has more than 2.3 million views on YouTube, and X posts linked to it.

According to the Macrons, the series spread "verifiably false and devastating lies," including that Brigitte Macron stole another person's identity and transitioned to female, and that the Macrons are blood relatives committing incest.

The complaint discusses circumstances under which the Macrons met, when the now 47-year-old president was a high school student and Brigitte was a teacher. It said their relationship "remained within the bounds of the law."

According to the complaint, baseless speculation about Brigitte Macron's gender began surfacing in 2021, and the topic has been discussed on popular podcasts hosted by Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan, who have many conservative followers.

In September, Brigitte won a lawsuit in a French court against two women, including a self-described medium, who contributed to spreading rumours about her gender.

An appeals court overturned that decision this month, and Brigitte Macron has appealed to France's highest court.

The case is Macron et al v Owens et al, Delaware Superior Court, No N25C-07-194.