Macrons file defamation suit against Candace Owens
French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, have launched a defamation lawsuit against prominent right-wing American podcaster Candace Owens. The Macrons accuse Owens of spreading “verifiably false and devastating lies” in an eight-part podcast and YouTube series titled Becoming Brigitte.
The 218-page complaint was filed on Wednesday in Delaware Superior Court, seeking a jury trial and unspecified punitive damages. It alleges that Owens falsely claimed Brigitte Macron was once a man and that the presidential couple are involved in incest, accusations the Macrons vehemently deny, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
The lawsuit recounts the circumstances under which the couple met: Emmanuel Macron was a high school student and Brigitte, his teacher, emphasizing that their relationship “remained within the bounds of the law.” The complaint also asserts that Owens’ campaign was “plainly designed to harass and cause pain” to the Macrons and their families, while seeking personal notoriety.
“We gave her every opportunity to back away from these claims, but she refused,” the couple said in a statement released by their legal team. “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 to the lawsuit during her podcast on Wednesday, dismissing the legal action as “littered with factual inaccuracies” and part of an “obvious and desperate public relations strategy” to damage her reputation. She claimed she was unaware of the suit, despite ongoing communications between lawyers since January.
A spokesperson for Owens described the lawsuit as an attempt to intimidate her, accusing the Macron administration of “attacking the First Amendment rights of an American independent journalist.” The spokesperson added that Brigitte Macron had declined Owens’s repeated requests for an interview.
The defamation suit highlights growing tensions between high-profile political figures and media personalities, raising questions about free speech and the limits of public commentary in a digital age.
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