Overview

• In a Paris Match interview published Tuesday, Emmanuel Macron said the rumor grew so widely in the United States that he and Brigitte Macron felt compelled to sue to “have the truth respected.”
• The couple filed a 22-count case in Delaware last month over Candace Owens’s “Becoming Brigitte” series and related statements alleging the first lady was assigned male at birth.
• Macron rejected Owens’s free‑speech defense and criticized what he called MAGA hypocrisy after Associated Press reporters were barred from the Oval Office over coverage of the Gulf of America naming.
• Reporting says the Macrons retained Nardello & Co. to document Owens’s links to far‑right figures and to map the online network that boosted the false claims.
• Investigators traced the conspiracy to a 2017 Spanish blog, with French publisher Xavier Poussard amplifying it into English to reach Owens, while an Owens spokesperson called the lawsuit an attack by a foreign government on an American journalist’s First Amendment rights.