Overview

• In his first public remarks on the case, Macron told Paris Match the couple filed in Delaware after the rumor grew in the United States and called the allegations “nonsense.”
• The 22-count suit seeks a jury trial and damages and cites Owens’s eight-part podcast, “Becoming Brigitte,” as a vehicle for spreading verifiably false claims.
• Owens has framed the action as an attack on the First Amendment and says she is prepared to fight the case in court.
• Macron rejected the free-speech defense, pointing to what he called hypocrisy over access for mainstream reporters to the Oval Office.
• Reporting says the Macrons retained Nardello & Co to map Owens’s ties and trace the rumor’s origins to a 2017 Spanish blog and French amplifiers, including Xavier Poussard, though these findings have been described by investigators rather than adjudicated in court.