New details about the background of the lawsuit filed by French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte against pro-Trump influencer Candace Owens are coming to light.
Read: Macron feud with blogger claiming Brigitte is male reaches new heights – Candace Owens responds
According to the Financial Times, the Macron couple’s legal team hired New York-based investigation firm Nardello & Co to compile a dossier on Owens, who falsely claimed without providing evidence in her “Becoming Brigitte” podcast series that Brigitte Macron was born male, before the French president and first lady filed a lawsuit against the influencer for defamatory libel last month.
Macrons hired investigators to research US influencer Candace Owens https://t.co/jT50oUZzX7
— Financial Times (@FT) August 11, 2025
The private investigators’ report documented Owens’ connections to French far-right personalities, far-right populists in the US and Britain, and her online contacts with Russian ultranationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, dubbed “Putin’s Rasputin” by Western media. It also highlighted how Russian state-controlled media promoted Owens’ claims, though it found no evidence of personal or business ties between the influencer and Russian officials.
Dan Nardello, executive chairman of the company and former federal prosecutor in New York, stated that the Macron couple filed the lawsuit “with full awareness of who Owens aligns herself with.”
Owens spread absurd claims about Brigitte Macron through her podcasts
According to the FT, the fact that private detectives were hired shows the fervor and financial commitment with which the Macrons are pursuing Owens’ conviction. In their lawsuit filed in Delaware state court, the French presidential couple argues that the influencer deliberately spread her absurd claims about Brigitte Macron through platform X and her podcast in March 2024 to increase her recognition, according to court documents obtained by several American media outlets.
In the same lawsuit, the Macrons note that Owens knowingly used false claims to generate revenue from her platform and despite the French presidential couple’s request to retract, the influencer responded with further fake news, claiming for example that Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron were relatives and that Emmanuel Macron became president of France with help from a CIA program.
Owens subsequently confirmed on her YouTube channel that the Macrons were taking legal action against her.
The decision to file the lawsuit was partly motivated by the Macrons’ desire to understand a conservative American podcaster’s interest in them, as Macron’s lawyer Tom Clare told the FT, noting that his clients are willing to travel to Delaware for the case’s court hearings.
Investigation reveals how fake news travels around the world
Analyzing Owens’ public statements, researchers identified how the influencer went from liberal at the start of her career to conservative after claiming online harassment. She then became an ardent Donald Trump supporter, but recently “broke” with the US president, saying she was ashamed to have campaigned for him.
Researchers also gathered material about the origin of the claim that Brigitte Macron was born male. They discovered it originated from a Spanish blogger’s post in May 2017 and began circulating in France from 2021. Contributing to the spread of these claims in late 2023 was Xavier Poussard, former editor-in-chief of the French far-right fringe publication “Faits et Documents.” He translated his fake news into English and sent it to Owens and “other Trumpists.”
After Owens published her podcast, her claims were picked up by Russian state media and reached a wider audience through them. The 36-year-old influencer with 4.4 million YouTube subscribers and nearly 7 million followers on platform X has significant reach in right-wing circles. In 2024, the Australian government banned her entry to the country, citing her spreading of false claims about the Holocaust and Muslims.
