One too many: After a multi-year smear campaign, Brigitte Macron strikes back.
After repeatedly claiming that Brigitte Macron, the wife of French president Emmanuel Macron, was not born female, right-wing influencer Candace Owens has been sued by the couple for defamation.
Owens' Claims
Over the course of several podcast episodes, posts on X and a video series titled "Becoming Brigitte", US-based right-wing influencer Candace Owens was – to put it in her words – ready to stake her "entire professional reputation" on claims that the wife of French president Emmanuel Macron was biologically male.
It now seems the couple is ready to take her by her word.
Brigitte Macron, mother of three children from her first marriage with André-Louis Auzière, rejected allegations regarding a gender reassignment as baseless and in bad faith. Amidst a flare-up of discourse on the handling of transgender and trans identity in US-American and European politics, the Macrons have described Owens' statements as an attempt "to garner attention and noteriety".
This comes after Owens, who before 2016 wrote for mostly left-leaning publications, has emerged as a conservative activist. She has since used her reach to disseminate various unproven theories such as the Apollo moon landing being faked, the Earth being flat, dinosaurs never existing, Israel being responsible for the 9/11 attacks, various prominent dictators being of Jewish descent and more.
Owens' Reasoning
The influencer herself has worked for various conservative news outlets like The Daily Wire in the past, before being let go due to internal disputes and allegations of antisemitism.
Following these events, Owens has gone mostly independent, publishing opinion pieces on social media, attaining an audience of millions of subscribers in the process. As part of this work, she has produced content in which she adopted a pre-existing conspiracy theory alleging that France's first lady was born as Jean-Michel Trogneux.
The actual Jean-Michel Trogneux, Brigtte Macron's older brother (with Trogneux being her maiden name), has in the past already participated in lawsuits to prove his identity. Different versions of the conspiracy theory allege that he either died at a young GE as a completely different person who was only given the name to allow Brigitte to adopt her new identity or that he simply never existed in the first place.
Despite two women in France already losing a defamation case against Macron for the same reason in 2022, Owens has used her reach to disseminate the assertions, expressing her belief that that the alleged gender transition was "likely the biggest scandal in political history". She now faces a similar trial, which she has called "an unprecedented lawsuit against a mother in America".
Owens' Potential Consequences
This new lawsuit, filed in Delaware, was framed by the French presidential couple as a last resort after having asked the influencer multiple times to retract her claims, apparently to no avail.
According to their lawyers, the two and their families are now seeking punitive damages against Owens and her business entities for 22 counts of defamation, false light, and defamation by implication. While no exact sum of money has been named, a loss would certainly pose a risk to Owens, who has lost the support of her former employers, meaning that her own insurance would need to front the costs.
In the past, the influencer had relied on soliciting donations for similar lawsuits after having been accused of defamation and of initiating cryptocurrency rug pull scams.
Suits initiated by Owens have been unsuccessful, with accusations against fact-checking organisations who flagged posts of hers for spreading dangerous Covid-19 misinformation being dismissed.