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French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, have hit far-right influencer Candace Owens with a defamation lawsuit over her false claims that Brigitte Macron is male.
In a suit filed on Wednesday in Delaware, the Macrons allege that Owens has profited from a “campaign of global humiliation” against the Macrons, the complaint said.
In a March 2024 podcast, Owens said she “would stake [her] entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man,” according to the lawsuit.
Despite attempts to stop Owens from spreading the conspiracy ― including a retraction letter sent by the Macrons ― she instead “helmed an eight-part podcast series entitled ‘Becoming Brigitte’ (the ‘Series’) and accompanying X posts,” the lawsuit said.
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As part of the series, Owens fired off a series of “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions.”
More from the lawsuit: 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.
The Macrons allege Owens has turned their lives “into fodder for profit-driven lies,” the complaint said. “Owens has dissected their appearance, their marriage, their friends, their family, and their personal history — twisting it all into a grotesque narrative designed to inflame and degrade,” the lawsuit said. “The result is relentless bullying on a worldwide scale.”
Owens, a notorious conspiracy theorist who has been banned entry to Australia and New Zealand over her hateful rhetoric, has previously amplified a conspiracy about Jews being “drunk on Christian blood,” a reference to a false, centuries-old antisemitic trope.
And in July of last year, Owens suggested on her podcast that the horrific experiments Nazi physician Josef Mengele conducted on twins at Holocaust death camps never happened, in part because it would be a “tremendous waste of time and supplies.” “That just sounds like bizarre propaganda,” she concluded.
The lawsuit against her does not specify the amount of damages the Macrons are seeking. Owens has not responded to the lawsuit, but did respond Tuesday to news that Brigitte Macron was suing the author of the book that first brought the baseless conspiracy to a mass audience.
“It’s official! Brigitte is now suing the author of ‘Becoming Brigitte’ for ‘cyberbullying,’” Owens posted on X. “Am I next?!”
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
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