French president Emmanuel Macron has claimed the lawsuit he and his wife have filed against right-wing American influencer Candace Owens was put forward to 'defend his honour.'
Since last year, 36-year-old Owens has espoused a crackpot theory to her four million YouTube subscribers that Macron's 72-year-old wife Brigitte was born a man.
Owens launched a podcast series called Becoming Brigitte, in which she delves into the conspiracy. She claims that Brigitte was born under the name 'Jean-Michel Trogneux.'
Her actions led Macron and his wife to file a lawsuit in the US against Owens in July, claiming that they had 'suffered substantial reputational damage' and spent 'considerable sums of money to correct the public record.'
Macron told Paris Match that while he was warned that taking legal action against Owens may result in the '"Streisand effect", drawing even more attention to these lies... It grew so big in the United States that we had to respond.
