French President And Wife Sue Candace Owens In Gender Rumour Case
A lawyer for France 's first couple said they'll be seeking "substantial" damages from US conservative influencer Candace Owens if she persists with claims that President Emmanuel Macron 's wife, Brigitte, is a man.
The lawyer, Tom Clare, said in an interview with CNN that a defamation suit filed Wednesday for the Macrons in a Delaware court was "really a last resort" after a fruitless yearlong effort to engage with Owens and requests that she "do the right thing: tell the truth, stop spreading these lies."
"Each time we've done that, she mocked the Macrons, she mocked our efforts to set the record straight," Clare said. "Enough is enough, it was time to hold her accountable."
The Macrons have been married since 2007, and Emmanuel Macron has been France's president since 2017.
In a YouTube video, Owens called the suit an "obvious and desperate public relations strategy," and said the first lady is "a very goofy man."
Owens is a right-leaning political commentator whose YouTube channel has about 4.5 million subscribers. In 2024, she was denied a visa from New Zealand and Australia, citing remarks in which she denied Nazi medical experimentation on Jews in concentration camps during World War II.
The 219-page complaint against Owens lays out "extensive evidence" that Brigitte Macron "was born a woman, she's always been a woman," the couple's attorney said.
"We'll put forward our damage claim at trial, but if she continues to double down between now and the time of trial, it will be a substantial award," he said.
In Paris, the presidential office had no immediate comment.
In France, too, the presidential couple has for years been dogged by conspiracy theories that Brigitte was born as a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux, who supposedly then took the name Brigitte as a transgender woman. Jean-Michel Trogneux is, in fact, Brigitte's brother.
Last September, Brigitte and Jean-Michel Trogneux won a defamation suit against two women who were sentenced by a Paris court to fines and damages for spreading the claims about the first lady online. A Paris appeals court overturned the ruling earlier this month. Brigitte and her brother have since turned to France's highest court to appeal that decision, according to French media.
The Macrons first met at the high school where he was a student and she was a teacher. Brigitte Macron was then Brigitte Auzière, a married mother of three children.
Macron, 47, is serving his second and last term as president. The first lady celebrated her 72nd birthday in April.
Macron moved to Paris for his last year of high school, but promised to marry Brigitte. She later moved to the French capital to join him and divorced before they finally married.
Their relationship came under the spotlight in May when video images showed Brigitte pushing her husband away with both hands on his face before they disembarked from a plane on a tour of Southeast Asia.
Macron later dismissed the incident as play-fighting, telling reporters that "we are squabbling and, rather, joking with my wife," and that it had been overblown into "a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe."
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Hans India
8 minutes ago
- Hans India
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They also are threatening to go after the popular WhatsApp platform while rolling out a new 'national' messenger that's widely expected to be heavily monitored. President Vladimir Putin urged the government to 'stifle' foreign internet services and ordered officials to assemble a list of platforms from 'unfriendly' states that should be restricted. Experts and rights advocates told The Associated Press that the scale and effectiveness of the restrictions are alarming. Authorities seem more adept at it now, compared with previous, largely futile efforts to restrict online activities, and they're edging closer to isolating the internet in Russia. Human Rights Watch researcher Anastasiia Kruope describes Moscow's approach to reining in the internet as 'death by a thousand cuts." "Bit by bit, you're trying to come to a point where everything is controlled.' Censorship after 2011-12 protests Kremlin efforts to control what Russians do, read or say online dates to 2011-12, when the internet was used to challenge authority. Independent media outlets bloomed, and anti-government demonstrations that were coordinated online erupted after disputed parliamentary elections and Putin's decision to run again for president. Russia began adopting regulations tightening internet controls. Some blocked websites; others required providers to store call records and messages, sharing it with security services if needed, and install equipment allowing authorities to control and cut off traffic. Companies like Google or Facebook were pressured to store user data on Russian servers, to no avail, and plans were announced for a 'sovereign internet' that could be cut off from the rest of the world. Russia's popular Facebook-like social media platform VK, founded by Pavel Durov long before he launched the Telegram messenger, came under the control of Kremlin-friendly companies. Russia tried to block Telegram between 2018-20 but failed. Prosecutions for social media posts and comments became common, showing that authorities were closely watching the online space. Still, experts had dismissed Kremlin efforts to rein in the internet as futile, arguing Russia was far from building something akin to China's 'Great Firewall,' which Beijing uses to block foreign websites. Ukraine invasion triggers crackdown After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the government blocked major social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, as well as Signal and a few other messaging apps. VPNs also were targeted, making it harder to reach restricted websites. YouTube access was disrupted last summer in what experts called deliberate throttling by authorities. 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The Print
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In the years ahead, India's leadership in the Indian Ocean will hinge less on the firepower of its warships and more on the precision of its technocratic engagement. More often than not, that journey will begin with a map. Abhijit Singh is a retired naval officer and former head of the Maritime Policy Initiative at ORF, New Delhi. Views are personal. He tweets @abhijit227. (Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)
United News of India
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