A rare cross-Atlantic defamation fight
A sitting French president suing an American podcaster in Delaware isn’t something you see every day. Yet that’s exactly what Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, have done. They filed a 219-page complaint in Delaware Superior Court on July 23, 2025, accusing Candace Owens of spreading a debunked rumor that Brigitte Macron was born male. The filing says Owens turned a falsehood into a business model and a spectacle, subjecting the couple to a “campaign of global humiliation.”
The dispute traces back to March 2024, when Owens told her audience she would “stake [her] entire professional reputation” on the claim that Brigitte Macron “is in fact a man.” She didn’t leave it at that. According to the complaint, Owens expanded the claim into an eight-part series titled “Becoming Brigitte,” repackaged it across social platforms, and treated the Macrons’ pushback as fresh content to stoke engagement. The lawsuit says she ignored basic evidence, leaned on recycled internet lore, and platformed figures known for conspiracy content to inflate the story’s reach.
The conspiracy centers on a name familiar in French press clippings: Jean-Michel Trogneux. That’s Brigitte Macron’s older brother. Owens and others have alleged—without credible proof—that Brigitte is actually Jean-Michel. The complaint calls the theory baseless and points out that French records, family members, and public reporting have long made clear who is who. To the Macrons, this isn’t a debate; it’s a targeted smear dressed up as entertainment.
Tom Clare, lead counsel at the defamation-focused firm Clare Locke, told CNN the case was “really a last resort.” He said the team spent a year trying to get Owens to correct the record: “request after request after request that she just simply do the right thing.” Those requests, the filing says, were met with mockery and more episodes. Clare Locke previously co-counseled Dominion Voting Systems in its $787 million settlement with Fox News, and the Macrons’ choice of that firm signals they plan to treat this like a serious, high-stakes information war, not a PR scuffle.
Owens didn’t back down when the lawsuit landed. On her show, she joked about her morning routine—“I wake up, I stretch, I have a cup of coffee, and then I am served with a lawsuit”—before calling Brigitte the “first lady man” of France. She suggested a potential loss would reflect corruption by liberal elites, even invoking Hunter Biden in a swipe at Delaware courts. In other words, she doubled down and framed the courtroom as just another arena for culture-war theater.
Why file in Delaware? Many U.S. media and tech businesses are registered there, and the state’s courts handle a lot of high-profile civil litigation. The complaint doesn’t just target a person; it aims at a content pipeline—podcasts, clips, posts, and monetization—all of which run through U.S.-based systems. Suing in America also tackles the audience where much of the content was produced and consumed, and where Owens is domiciled. The venue points to a broader goal: establish that free speech doesn’t shield fact-free smears when they’re presented as truth.
There’s a deeper context here. Rumors about Brigitte Macron’s identity have circulated online for years, especially in francophone social media communities. French outlets and fact-checkers have knocked them down repeatedly. What’s different now is scale and persistence. A U.S. influencer with a large audience repackaged old material as an on-ramp for new subscribers and ad revenue. The complaint’s core argument is simple: this wasn’t a mistake; it was a campaign.
Defamation claims by world leaders are rare in U.S. courts for a reason. Public figures face a towering legal standard. Under American law, they must prove “actual malice”—that the defendant knew a statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. That is not about anger or bias; it’s a test of state of mind. Did the speaker ignore obvious evidence? Did they rely on sources they knew were unreliable? Did they keep repeating a claim after being shown why it was wrong? Those are the kinds of questions that decide cases like this.
Legal scholars point out that “actual malice” isn’t easy to show. It often turns on emails, drafts, messages, and editorial decisions—what lawyers call discovery. If this case moves forward, expect subpoenas for internal communications, revenue reports tied to the series, booking notes on who appeared in episodes, and records showing what Owens and her team were told, when they were told it, and by whom. The Macrons will aim to show that warnings and evidence weren’t just ignored—they were used as fuel.
Owens may argue that her statements were opinion or hyperbole. Opinion is protected. But courts look closely at how claims are framed. If a host tells the audience they have the facts, names names, and insists on a real-world accusation that can be proven true or false, that moves into defamation territory. Satire defenses also falter when the presentation looks like a factual exposé. The complaint says “Becoming Brigitte” was packaged as a documentary-style investigation, not a skit.
The filing seeks “actual, presumed, and punitive” damages. That’s legal shorthand covering measurable harm (like reputational and emotional distress) and penalties aimed at deterrence. In practice, public figures must clear the actual-malice bar to collect substantial awards. And while plaintiffs often want retractions or corrections, U.S. courts are cautious about prior restraint—forcing someone not to speak. The more realistic goals here are financial penalties and a judgment that labels the assertions false.
The Macrons’ move also spotlights the business mechanics of influence. Podcast series are mini media companies—ad inserts, sponsorships, subscriber tiers, merch, live events, cross-posts on video platforms. A controversy can become a growth engine. The complaint essentially argues that Owens treated an invented identity for France’s first lady as a hit franchise. Expect plaintiffs to trace how each episode was marketed, how clips were boosted, and what revenue spikes followed the most inflammatory claims.
For the couple at the center of this, the personal stakes are obvious. Brigitte Macron, 72, is a public figure in her own right and a frequent subject of sexist commentary. The lawsuit frames the gender-based rumor as not just false but degrading, designed to ridicule. It says the toll isn’t abstract; it follows them into public events, media appearances, and everyday life. The filing casts the issue as dignity versus clicks.
The choice of a U.S. forum adds diplomatic texture. France’s defamation laws tilt more toward personal reputation than America’s First Amendment tradition does. By coming to Delaware, the Macrons signal they’re willing to fight on the hardest legal terrain. If they win, it reverberates far beyond Paris. It would tell influencers that cross-border audiences don’t immunize them from accountability when they cross from criticism into invented facts.
What happens next? Owens will likely move to dismiss, arguing the claims are protected speech or that the complaint falls short on actual malice. If the case survives, discovery starts. That phase can be long and bruising, and it often drives settlements. Trials are unpredictable, and juries tend to take reputational harm more seriously when evidence shows a defendant ignored the truth. Still, public-figure cases often fail if the paper trail is thin.
The legal team’s pedigree matters. Clare Locke has carved out a niche in high-profile reputation defense, including work in the Dominion case that rocked cable news. That doesn’t guarantee success, but it signals resources and a playbook: build a tight factual record, surface ignored warnings, and track money flows tied to specific claims. If they can tell a clear story—“Here’s the evidence you had; here’s when you saw it; here’s how you profited after you knew better”—they’ll be in the zone where defamation cases get traction.
Owens, for her part, is framing the suit as proof she’s over the target. That’s a familiar script in the influencer economy. Lawsuits become content. Court dates become promos. Losses become badges of honor. The question for a jury, if it gets that far, won’t be whether Owens is provocative. It will be whether she made and sold a factual claim she either knew was false or never bothered to check, despite having every reason to.
There’s also the practical reality: cross-border enforcement. If the Macrons win damages, collection still has to happen in the United States. That keeps the fight where the audience and the revenue are. It also sets a precedent for future cases where international figures face reputational attacks built in the American media ecosystem and exported worldwide in seconds.
Strip away the personalities, and the case boils down to a narrow but crucial line. Free speech lets you question leaders, mock them, and criticize their choices. It does not give you a pass to assert a testable lie about their identity and market it as news. That’s the line the Macrons say was crossed—and the line Delaware’s court will now be asked to draw, in a public trial that doubles as a referendum on how far the attention economy can go before it hits the guardrails of a defamation lawsuit.
What the case must prove—and why it matters
To win, the Macrons have to make actual malice real, not theoretical. They’ll aim to show that Owens received credible documentation of Brigitte’s identity; that she was told that Jean-Michel Trogneux is a living person and Brigitte’s brother; and that episodes were produced and promoted anyway. They’ll try to tie those editorial choices to revenue and growth metrics.
Owens will likely push back on every link in that chain. She may attack the plaintiffs’ evidence, challenge the reliability of their sources, and cast herself as a skeptic asking hard questions. She may say her audience understood her tone as rhetorical or satirical. And she may argue that public figures must tolerate harsh—even outrageous—commentary about their lives. Those arguments don’t work if a jury thinks she presented a factual claim as proven truth. They can work if jurors see the content as heated opinion in a chaotic online marketplace.
The broader stakes extend beyond this one rumor. If the case advances, it will test how courts handle influencer-driven misinformation that looks and sounds like journalism but doesn’t follow its rules. It will test whether persistent repetition after formal retraction demands is enough to show reckless disregard. And it will test whether a global audience increases the harm that a plaintiff can plausibly claim.
However it ends, the suit sends a clear signal. High-profile targets are no longer content to let the internet churn. They’re picking venues, hiring heavyweight counsel, and forcing discovery to pry open the production machinery behind viral claims. If that model sticks, the next influencer who turns a rumor into a series may have to budget for lawyers alongside microphones and cameras.
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