France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron, plans to present photographic and scientific evidence to a U.S. court in a bid to battle conspiracies suggesting she was actually born male.
The documentation is meant to bolster a defamation lawsuit filed by both Brigitte and her husband, French President Emmanuel Macron, against right-wing podcaster Candace Owens, who has for years publicly questioned the first lady’s gender identity. The couple has said she “disregarded all credible evidence disproving her claim in favor of platforming known conspiracy theorists and proven defamers.”
The Macrons’ attorney, Tom Clare, speaking with the BBC’s “Fame Under Fire” podcast, said they are prepared to demonstrate fully “both generically and specifically” that the allegations spread by Owens are false.
“It is incredibly upsetting to think that you have to go and subject yourself, to put this type of proof forward,” Clare added.
Owens first started spreading the claim in 2024 in YouTube videos and podcast episodes that have since netted millions of views. At one point, she said she’d stake her “entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man” named Jean-Michel Trogneux.
Upon demands for a retraction, Owens hosted a podcast series called “Becoming Brigitte,” which, along with posts on X, “endorsed, repeated, and published a series of verifiably false and devastating lies about the Macrons,” the suit said.
The theory first gained traction back in 2021, thanks in part to a YouTube video shared by French bloggers Amandine Roy and Natacha Rey. They were also sued by the Macrons.
In 2024, the couple won their defamation case against the duo, but that ruling was overturned on appeal in 2025 on freedom of expression grounds, not on the basis of truth.
The Macrons are appealing the decision.
