French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron have filed a US defamation suit against rightwing influencer Candace Owens, who has claimed France's first lady "is actually a man". The 218-page lawsuit, which was filed in Delaware on Wednesday (July 23), alleges Owens had published "outrageous, defamatory and far-fetched fictions", among which was that Brigitte Macron was born male as Jean-Michel Trogneux.
Owens has further claimed that Macron and the French president's wife are blood relatives and Emmanuel Macron is either the product of a CIA human experiment or "a similar government mind control programme", as per the Macrons' court document.
The lawsuit is an unusual instance of a current world leader suing an online influencer personally for content, although it follows days after Donald Trump sued the Wall Street Journal and its holding companies over a report of a letter that the US president allegedly wrote to Jeffrey Epstein.
The Macrons have a steep legal hurdle to overcome, as US defamation law mandates that public figures establish "actual malice", i.e., that the person knew or had a reckless disregard whether the information was true or not. The Macrons are asking for a jury trial and damages punitive.
“The principle here is truth,” the Macrons’ lawyer Thomas Clare, co-founder of defamation specialist firm Clare Locke, was quoted saying to the Financial Times. “They believe it’s important to stand up for themselves . . . Owens has had multiple...
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