PARIS\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A lawyer for France\u2019s first couple said they\u2019ll be seeking \u201csubstantial\u201d damages from U.S. conservative influencer Candace Owens if she persists with claims that President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s wife, Brigitte, is a man.<\/p>\n
The lawyer, Tom Clare, said in an interview with CNN that a defamation suit filed Wednesday for the Macrons in a Delaware court was \u201creally a last resort\u201d after a fruitless yearlong effort to engage with Owens and requests that she \u201cdo the right thing: tell the truth, stop spreading these lies.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cEach time we\u2019ve done that, she mocked the Macrons, she mocked our efforts to set the record straight,\u201d Clare said. \u201cEnough is enough, it was time to hold her accountable.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Macrons have been married since 2007, and Emmanuel Macron has been France\u2019s president since 2017. <\/p>\n
In a YouTube video, Owens called the suit an \u201cobvious and desperate public relations strategy,\u201d and said the first lady is \u201ca very goofy man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Owens is a right-leaning political commentator whose YouTube channel has about 4.5 million subscribers. In 2024, she was denied a visa from New Zealand and Australia, citing remarks in which she denied Nazi medical experimentation on Jews in concentration camps during World War II.<\/p>\n
The 219-page complaint against Owens lays out \u201cextensive evidence\u201d that Brigitte Macron \u201cwas born a woman, she\u2019s always been a woman,\u201d the couple\u2019s attorney said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll put forward our damage claim at trial, but if she continues to double down between now and the time of trial, it will be a substantial award,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
In Paris, the presidential office had no immediate comment. <\/p>\n
In France, too, the presidential couple has for years been dogged by conspiracy theories that Brigitte was born as a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux, who supposedly then took the name Brigitte as a transgender woman. Jean-Michel Trogneux is, in fact, Brigitte\u2019s brother.<\/p>\n
Last September, Brigitte and Jean-Michel Trogneux won a defamation suit against two women who were sentenced by a Paris court to fines and damages for spreading the claims about the first lady online. A Paris appeals court overturned the ruling earlier this month. Brigitte and her brother have since turned to France\u2019s highest court to appeal that decision, according to French media.<\/p>\n
The Macrons first met at the high school where he was a student and she was a teacher. Brigitte Macron was then Brigitte Auzi\u00e8re, a married mother of three children. <\/p>\n
Macron, 47, is serving his second and last term as president. The first lady celebrated her 72nd birthday in April. <\/p>\n
Macron moved to Paris for his last year of high school, but promised to marry Brigitte. She later moved to the French capital to join him and divorced before they finally married.<\/p>\n
Their relationship came under the spotlight in May when video images showed Brigitte pushing her husband away with both hands on his face before they disembarked from a plane on a tour of Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n
Macron later dismissed the incident as play-fighting, telling reporters that \u201cwe are squabbling and, rather, joking with my wife,\u201d and that it had been overblown into \u201ca sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A lawyer for France\u2019s first couple said they\u2019ll be seeking \u201csubstantial\u201d damages from U.S. conservative influencer Candace Owens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[96142,48798,4767,15581,55922,2000,299,108381,36,108380,95917,3144,108379,108382,12840,3114,3137],"class_list":{"0":"post-291369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-brigitte","9":"tag-brigitte-macron","10":"tag-brother","11":"tag-claim","12":"tag-defamation","13":"tag-eu","14":"tag-europe","15":"tag-first-lady","16":"tag-france","17":"tag-jean-michel-trogneux","18":"tag-macrons","19":"tag-man","20":"tag-owens","21":"tag-paris-court","22":"tag-president-emmanuel-macron","23":"tag-time","24":"tag-woman"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}