“The life of Candace Owens, it works like this,” said the popular right-wing commentator on her podcast on Wednesday. “I wake up, I stretch, I have a cup of coffee, and then I am served with a lawsuit.”
Owens explained that she had just been sued by the “first lady man” of France, repeating her contentious claim that Brigitte Macron, the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, was born male.
It’s a claim that Owens previously said “I would stake my entire professional reputation on”—and which she may now have to, as the Macrons seek to take Owens to trial, filing a 219-page complaint before a Delaware court on Wednesday that alleges she has subjected them to a “campaign of global humiliation.”
The Macrons are represented by Clare Locke, a law firm that specializes in high-profile reputation cases and is perhaps best known for serving as co-counsel for Dominion Voting Systems in its historic $787 million settlement against Fox News over the cable network’s 2020 election lies.
The complaint against Owens requests not-yet-specified “actual, presumed, and punitive” monetary damages and “such other and additional remedies as the Court may deem just and proper.”
“This was really a last resort,” lead counsel Tom Clare told CNN about the lawsuit. “We have attempted to engage with [Owens] for the last year—putting evidence in front of her, request after request after request that she just simply do the right thing.” Clare said these attempts were ignored. “Enough is enough.”
Owens’ response, however, suggests the saga will not end anytime soon.
“I am fully prepared to take on this battle,” Owens said. “On behalf of the entire world, I will see you in court.”
What the Macrons’ lawsuit says
In the complaint, which included 99 pages of allegations of fact and outlined 22 alleged counts of defamation and false light, the Macrons claim that Owens has endorsed, manufactured, and promoted a series of false statements about them, including that Brigitte Macron was born a man and transitioned to identify as a woman, that Brigitte Macron statutorily raped a young Emmanuel Macron, that the two are related and engaged in incest, and that the Macrons have abused their power to conceal their scandalous pasts. The lawsuit states that all such claims are demonstrably false and defamatory and alleges that Owens knowingly laundered the falsities in “pursuit of fame.”
The lawsuit cites a number of pieces of evidence—including photos of a young Brigitte, a contemporaneous newspaper announcement of her birth, and the fact she gave birth to three children with her first husband—to refute Owens’ claims.
It also takes aim at Owens’ credibility, pointing to her career of “routinely peddling misinformation under the guise of legitimate reporting” and saying that she “built a brand on provocation, not truth.” Owens, who previously worked as communications director for the conservative activist organization Turning Point USA and was fired for antisemitism from the conservative media site The Daily Wire last year, has millions of followers on X and YouTube.
The complaint argues that Owens monetized her allegedly defamatory claims about the Macrons, including by selling merchandise such as a shirt displaying Brigitte Macron on a fake TIME magazine “Man of the Year” cover.
The lawsuit highlights that Owens was sent a detailed retraction demand letter in December that “conclusively disproved” her claims about the Macrons but Owens still went on to produce an eight-part video series titled “Becoming Brigitte” in which she continued to peddle false claims. Owens, according to the complaint, misrepresented the letter to her followers and suggested that the Macrons were attempting to “intimidate” her, which she cited as inspiration for producing the series, which was “aggressively monetized” and used to “elevate her personal brand.”
“Her conduct reveals a clear motive to generate controversy for financial and reputational gain,” the complaint alleges. “She will say anything, regardless of how outrageous or unfounded, to attract attention, build her platform, and achieve notoriety.”
The lawsuit claims “overwhelming evidence” of actual malice, a standard required to be proved clearly and convincingly by plaintiffs in order for a defamation case to overcome First Amendment protections. In addition to her response to the retraction demand letter, financial motivations, and political bias, it cites Owens’ reliance on non-credible sources to promote an “inherently improbable” conspiracy theory.
The complaint references a ruling by a court in France last September that found two of Owens’ sources—“so-called clairvoyant” Amandine Roy and “amateur detective” Natacha Rey—liable for libel for spreading false claims about Brigitte Macron and her brother. An appeals court overturned the convictions earlier this month, though the complaint against Owens notes that the ruling “did not overturn the judgment on the basis that the statements were true” but rather because it believed the defendants made the claims in “good faith.” That case has been appealed by Macron to France’s highest court.
In summarizing the reputational and emotional harm the French leader and his wife have suffered, the complaint says that Owens’ allegedly defamatory statements “caused numerous individuals who heard or read them—both those who had held the Macrons in high regard and those who otherwise would have, as well as those with no awareness or opinion of the Macrons—to view them with contempt, to hold them in low regard, and to avoid associating or doing business with them, and to encourage others to avoid associating or doing business with them as well.” As a result, it added, “relationships with other members of the government, potential political allies, and others” as well as “confidence in the Macrons’ integrity and fitness as political and governmental leaders” have been undermined.
And the devastating reach has been global, the complaint asserts, invoking Owens’ own statement in a March podcast episode: “This is not just viral in France, viral in America, viral in the UK, the story, it’s even viral in Russia. People are now considering it as a part of their political dialogue and analyses.”
The Macrons described the spread of Owens false statements by other media personalities and influencers, including Joe Rogan, who is widely described as the most popular podcaster in the world. On March and April episodes of his show, which has 20 million subscribers on YouTube, Rogan said he believed Owens’ claims. “Yeah, Brigitte Macron’s a man. She got me hook, line, and sinker,” Rogan said of Owens, noting that if her claims were false “she would be getting sued right now…they would sue her.”
Owens herself had also practically dared the Macrons to sue her, according to the complaint, telling them after the December retraction to “bring” it. “I’ll run down to the courthouse and file the lawsuit for you,” Owens said. “I might even cover your legal expenses.”
How Owens has responded to the Macrons’ lawsuit
Since the complaint was filed, Owens has only doubled down, even using it to promote her “Becoming Brigitte” series.
In a 52-minute podcast episode with a sharecard that advertised “This took…balls,” Owens insisted: “If you need any more evidence that Brigitte Macron is definitely a man, it is just what is happening right now. The idea that you would file this lawsuit is all of the proof that you need.”
She continued to label Brigitte Macron a “groomer” and “pedophile,” referencing how the couple met when Emmanuel Macron was a student and Brigitte was then his teacher. Brigitte was 39 years old at the time, while Owens claims Emmanuel was 14, though the Macrons have long said he was 15, which is the age of consent in France. “At all times, the teacher-student relationship between Mrs. Macron and President Macron remained within the bounds of the law,” the complaint stated.
Owens minimized the complaint’s accusation of “relentless bullying,” asking “How old are you? Are you five years old? Really?” At the same time, she claimed the defamation lawsuit was a form of bullying and defamation against her.
“You’re trying to delegitimize the reporting by smearing my character,” she said, before reading from the complaint. “Here’s one: ‘She has promoted a range of conspiracy theories, including anti-vaccine falsehoods, longdebunked antisemitic tropes such as blood libel, and Holocaust distortion’ … None of that is true. None of that is true,” Owens responded.
“Fire everybody around you, and I mean literally everyone around you, who told you that this was a good idea. That this was a very good idea for you to be the first sitting first lady of a country to file a lawsuit against a journalist of another country,” Owens said, calling the lawsuit a “catastrophic PR strategy.”
“You’re defaming me because you don’t want people to continue to watch the series. But I’m sorry, my friend, the train has left the station,” Owens said. “It’s not going to work, OK? You’ve met your match.”
“We’re not going to shut up. You’re not going to bully us. Frankly, I find this all to be irresistible and delicious,” Owens said. She then claimed that in the legal proceedings that may follow she would even try to depose President Donald Trump, who Owens said called her earlier this year to say he personally confronted the French President about questions surrounding his wife’s gender. Owens also said that her lawyer would “be able to sit across and ask Brigitte Macron questions about her penis” and “Brigitte would then be compelled for the first time to answer them under oath.”
Owens railed against what she called the “perverts that run the world” and a “sadistic syndicate,” and she suggested that the only conceivable way she could lose in court is because of corruption masterminded by liberal elites. “I think Hunter Biden kind of notoriously implied that his family controls the courts in Delaware. That is true. Maybe that’s what they’re banking on.”