"Investigation Claims Ties to Russian Conservatives"
Brigitte Macron, the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, has hired an international private investigation firm and is now engaged in a legal dispute with conservative American influencer Candace Owens.
On August 12 (local time), the UK’s Financial Times (FT) reported, "President Macron's team hired private investigators to look into Owens in preparation for a lawsuit." The report added, "The resulting dossier included information that Owens is connected to far-right figures in France and is popular on Russian state media." In addition, the investigation found that Owens has ties to conservative politicians and journalists in France, the UK, and the United States.
Last month, the Macron couple filed a defamation lawsuit against Owens in a Delaware court in the United States. Among the total of 22 charges, there was an allegation that Brigitte Macron was born as a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux and later transitioned. Jean-Michel Trogneux is actually Brigitte Macron's brother. In their 218-page complaint, the Macrons' legal team emphasized that "Owens is spreading an absurd, blatantly false, and preposterous fiction."
It is rare for a sitting head of state to file a lawsuit against an online influencer. International media outlets analyzed, "This shows that the presidential couple is taking the matter very seriously." The rumor that Brigitte Macron was originally male was first spread by a Spanish blogger after Emmanuel Macron was elected in 2017, and it became widely circulated in France through far-right journalist Xavier Poussard.
Owens is a podcast host and influencer with over 4.5 million subscribers on YouTube alone. She broadcast an eight-episode series with the same content as "Becoming Brigitte," a book published by Poussard in February, and each episode garnered millions of views.
International media explained, "Owens is not only connected to far-right figures in France, but also in the United States and the United Kingdom, and she has communicated online with Russian nationalists." As soon as Owens' podcast series was released, the Russian state media outlet Tsargrad gave it extensive coverage, and the Macron team has noted that she has appeared on Russian state broadcaster RT more than 30 times since 2018.
In May, when President Macron and his wife visited Vietnam, a video of Brigitte Macron pushing the president's face with her hand went viral. President Macron claimed that several pro-Russian media outlets were deliberately spreading the video. However, international media added, "There is no evidence that Owens has had direct contact with Russian officials or state media journalists."
Upon hearing the news, Owens mocked Brigitte Macron, saying, "Brigitte Macron is spending money on lawyers, international PR teams, and investigators to hide her past."
Meanwhile, in July, the Paris Court of Appeal overturned a lower court’s guilty verdict and acquitted two women who had been convicted of defaming Brigitte Macron. In the first trial, they had received a suspended fine of 500 euros (about 730,000 won) and were ordered to pay 8,000 euros (about 1,179,000 won) in damages to Brigitte Macron and 5,000 euros (about 737,000 won) to her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux. The appellate court stated that it did not rule on the truth of the rumors, but based its decision on freedom of expression and the right to raise questions. Brigitte Macron's lawyer said, "She was shocked by this ruling" and added, "We plan to appeal to the French Supreme Court."
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
