‘Brigitte is in fact a man’: Who is Candace Owens, the American influencer being sued by Macrons?

Here’s another feather she can add in her controversial hat. Candace Owens, the American right-wing influencer, has been hit with a defamation lawsuit by none other than France’s First Couple — Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron.

The reason for the lawsuit: the right-wing influencer claims that France’s First Lady Brigitte is “in fact a man” and that the French president was a product of a CIA human experiment or “a similar government mind control programme”.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in the US state of Delaware, is a rare one as world leaders rarely file defamation suits. However, it comes just days after US President Donald Trump sued the Wall Street Journal and its parent companies over a report of a letter that the American leader allegedly wrote to financier Jeffrey Epstein.

But who exactly is Candace Owens? Why have the Macrons sued her? What’s at stake?

Why have Macrons sued Candace Owens?

On Wednesday (July 23), the Macrons filed a 218-page lawsuit against the American influencer, who has nearly seven million followers on X, six million followers on Instagram and nearly another five million on YouTube.

In the lawsuit, the French power couple claim that Owens has been spreading “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions”.

The “fictions” that the Macrons are referring to are about Brigitte’s gender. Last March, Owens on her YouTube channel stated that she would stake her “entire professional reputation” on her belief that Mrs Macron “is in fact a man”. The influencer further claimed that the conspiracy theory was “likely the biggest scandal in political history.”

In the time to come, she has released a video series titled Becoming Brigitte.

Notably, Owens isn’t the first person to make these claims about the French First Lady. However, she has amplified them. The French First Lady had previously filed legal claims against two women in France over their theory that Brigitte was a biological male . They were initially found guilty of libel, which has now been overturned. The French First Lady has now appealed this.

But the lawsuit isn’t just about Owens’ claims on Brigitte’s gender. The lawsuit also accuses Owens of falsely alleging the French president and his wife are blood relatives and that Emmanuel Macron was installed in office by a secret CIA plot.

The Macrons have stated that through their lawsuit they seek a retraction from Owens 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. “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.”

The French First Couple also state that they have now been subjected to a “campaign of global humiliation turning their lives into fodder for profit-driven lies” and “relentless bullying on a worldwide scale”.

The lawsuit further claims, “Every time the Macrons leave their home, they do so knowing that countless people have heard, and many believe, these vile fabrications. It is invasive, dehumanising, and deeply unjust,” the complaint continued.

What is Owens’ reaction to the lawsuit?

The American right-wing influencer has dismissed the lawsuit, posting on YouTube that it was “an obvious and desperate public relations strategy.”

Moreover, a spokesperson for her said that she was “not shutting up”. “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.”

Who is Candace Owens?

The Macron lawsuit has shone a spotlight on Candace Owens and her many controversies. Born in 1989, this African-American studied journalism at the University of Rhode Island, but dropped out after her junior year due to a student loan issue.

After dropping out of college, in 2015, began a marketing company that often posted anti-conservative content — one article even mocked Donald Trump’s penis size. A year later, she In 2016, she began a website called SocialAutopsy.com, which identified and exposed online bullies. She said she made the site after experiencing racialised bullying and harassment in high school.

However, after receiving criticism for her website, in 2017, she “became a conservative overnight” after realising “liberals were actually racists”.

She then began a YouTube channel in which she regularly criticised Democrats, feminists and even the Black Lives Matter movement . A lot of her early commentary was about the Democratic Party creating and profiting from a “victim mentality” among African-Americans. In fact, in 2022, she even wrote, directed and produced a film called The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM. The documentary-style film claimed that George Floyd died of an overdose, not at the hands of a white police officer.

Today, Owens is known for supporting and championing the most bizarre of conspiracy theories. She was one of the foremost voices against Covid vaccines — she accused billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates of being a ‘vaccine criminal’ and has questioned mortality figures from the pandemic.

Last year, she was banned from entering New Zealand and Australia with both citing anti-Semitic remarks made by her in the past. According to Australia’s immigration minister, her comments “incite discord in almost every direction”.

Earlier in June, she grabbed headlines when she said that she was “embarrassed” after campaigning for President Trump during the 2024 presidential election cycle. “He’s been a chronic disappointment. And I feel embarrassed that I told people to go vote for him because this wasn’t going to happen, and it is happening.” Her comments came after Trump ordered for B-52 bombers to strike at Iran’s nuclear sites amid tensions with Israel.

With inputs from agencies