French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte have filed a new defamation lawsuit in the United States against podcaster Candace Owens, opening a second front in a legal dispute over false claims about the French first lady.

The complaint was lodged on 4 November in the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, where Owens lives. It runs to more than 400 pages and lists 88 counts, including defamation, false light and defamation by implication. The couple are seeking damages, including punitive damages, legal costs and a court order restricting republication of any statement found to be defamatory. They have also asked for a jury trial.

Owens confirmed the filing herself on Monday 9 November, writing on X that the Macrons had filed a new set of claims against her, 88 in total. An official from Macron's office confirmed that the presidential couple had filed the lawsuit, Reuters reported.

Why Tennessee, and why now

The new case follows a ruling last month that narrowed the Macrons' first lawsuit. They sued Owens and two businesses associated with her in Delaware in July 2025, over what they called a campaign of global humiliation built on the false claim that Brigitte Macron was born a man.

On 27 October, a Delaware judge ruled that the court did not have jurisdiction over Owens personally because she lives in Tennessee. The claims against her companies, Candace Owens LLC and GeorgeTom Inc, were allowed to continue. The Tennessee filing targets Owens herself, in her home state, under the case name Macron v. Owens, No. 3:26-cv-01765.

According to the complaint, Owens has persisted with the claims since the first lawsuit was filed, launching a new season of her eight-part podcast series Becoming Brigitte in September 2025. The filing says she used the false statements to promote her independent platform, gain notoriety and make money, and that she continued to use her podcast to expand the claims, sell merchandise mocking the Macrons and collect donations.

What the complaint alleges

At the centre of the case is the unfounded claim that Brigitte Macron, 73, was born a man and took on the identity of her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux. The complaint says the couple have been accused of lying to France and the world for decades about who Mrs Macron is, and of committing crimes to conceal that supposed lie. The Macrons describe the claims as verifiably false and devastating lies and say Owens knew they were false when she published them.

The new filing also takes issue with Owens's use of a doll made to resemble Brigitte Macron, which the couple called grotesque and said was used as a prop to ridicule her appearance.

The Macrons have said they are prepared to present photographic and scientific evidence in the US case. Their lawyer, Tom Clare, told the BBC in September 2025 that expert testimony of a scientific nature would be presented, along with photographs, and that Mrs Macron was prepared to meet that burden.

False claims that Mrs Macron was born a man have circulated in France since Emmanuel Macron's first election in 2017. They spread more widely in the United States after Owens took them up in March 2024, when she said she would stake her professional reputation on the claim.

Earlier proceedings in France

Brigitte Macron has also gone to court in France over the same false claim. In September 2024, two women were convicted after posting a video in December 2021 alleging that she had once been a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux, who is in fact her brother. An appeal court overturned that judgment on 10 July 2025, on grounds other than the truth of the statements, and the case is before France's Court of Cassation.

For now, no court has decided whether Owens defamed the Macrons. The Tennessee case is at its earliest stage: a summons was issued on 5 November, and the claims remain allegations to be tested in court. The couple say they have turned to the Tennessee court to set the record straight, prevent further harm and hold Candace Owens accountable for her conduct.