Brigitte “born man”: the Macron couple attacks the influencer Candace Owens

French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, hired defamation prosecutions in the United States on Wednesday against the American influencer Candace Owens for having relayed and widely exploited in videos the info that Brigitte Macron is “born man”.

This infox resurfaced regularly in France on social networks since the first election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017 prospered abroad, in particular in the United States, after the far-right blogger Candace Owens seized it in March 2024, giving her a global echo since January 2025 by a series of videos entitled “Becoming Brigitte” (“Become Brigitte”).

The presidential couple filed a defamation complaint on Wednesday before a court of Delaware (east), claiming an “exemplary” amount of damages to be determined during a trial.

Their lawyers claim in the complaint that Candace Owens was fully aware of the falsity of these allegations and systematically rejected all requests for rectification, persisting in his “defamation campaign” to “gain notoriety and make money”, stressing that it now has 6.9 million subscribers to its X and 4.7 million on Youtube.

According to the infox at the origin of this affair, very relayed in France by movements mixing conspirators, covido-skeptics or extreme right, Brigitte Macron, born Trogneux, would never have existed, but her brother Jean-Michel would have taken this identity after having changed sex.

Two women, Natacha Rey and Amandine Roy, who had widely disseminated her, were sentenced in September by French justice to pay several thousand euros in damages to Brigitte Macron and 5000 to Jean-Michel Togneux, but they were released on appeal on July 10. Brigitte Macron and her brother appeared in the cassation against this decision.