French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte, are suing the right-wing YouTuber Candace Owens for defamation.
In a suit filed on Wednesday in Delaware against Owens and her businesses, the Macrons say Owens has engaged in ongoing defamatory attacks against them to elevate her media platform, gain more audience and make money.
Owens said in early 2024 that she would “stake [her] entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man”. Since then, she has doubled down on these claims and added more, including in an eight-part podcast series called Becoming Brigitte, the lawsuit alleges.
The Macrons sought retractions from Owens, the suit says, for the “demonstrably false” claims she has made about them but she instead “mocked them and used them as additional fodder for her frenzied fan base”.
“These outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions included that Mrs Macron was born a man, stole another person’s identity, and transitioned to become Brigitte; Mrs Macron and President Macron are blood relatives committing incest; President Macron was chosen to be the President of France as part of the CIA-operated MKUltra program or a similar mind-control program; and Mrs Macron and President Macron are committing forgery, fraud, and abuses of power to conceal these secrets.
“Because Ms Owens systematically reaffirmed these falsehoods in response to each of our attorneys’ repeated requests for a retraction, we ultimately concluded that referring the matter to a court of law was the only remaining avenue,” the Macrons said in a statement. “Ms Owens’ campaign of defamation was plainly designed to harass and cause pain to us and our families and to garner attention and notoriety. 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.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Owens said the commentator was “not shutting up”. Owens is expected to address the lawsuit on her show on Wednesday.
“This is a foreign government attacking the first amendment rights of an American independent journalist. Candace repeatedly requested an interview with Brigitte Macron. Instead of offering a comment, Brigitte is resorting to trying to bully a reporter into submission. In France, politicians can bully journalists, but this is not France. It’s America.”
It is unusual for a sitting president to sue a journalist, though Donald Trump has filed multiple lawsuits, some of which have led to settlements, against US media outlets in recent months.
The Macrons have previously filed legal claims against two women in France over their theory that Brigitte Macron is a biological male. They were initially found guilty of libel, though that was then overturned and is now being appealed.