Last January the public was given a rare insight into what Mr Justice Michael Twomey described as “millionaire” court costs. It went public only because the defendant was arguing that the plaintiff would be unable to pay the likely eye-watering costs if the latter lost the case.
In short, the losing party could face an overall bill of between €1 million and €2 million, said the judge, who remarked in passing that the Taoiseach’s salary of about €230,000 covers his work for an entire 12 months.
Anyone contemplating legal action might consider the American satirist Ambrose Bierce’s definition of litigation: a machine that you go into as a pig and come out as a sausage.
In the US, defamation juries play with the kind of numbers that would make lawyers here blanch. In E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against Donald Trump (following an earlier judgment that found him liable for sexually abusing her) the jury awarded her $83.3 million, which he is appealing.
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But the really big ones are rarely just about numbers. Many fervently pray for the day that Trump and Rupert Murdoch face off in court over the Wall Street Journal’s report about Trump’s “secret” birthday message for Epstein, but the numbers are almost irrelevant; it’s about discovery.
It’s only partly about the numbers in the Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron v Candace Owens US defamation lawsuit, in that a punitive jury could bankrupt Owens.
Owens, a right-wing podcaster and commentator, is married to the son of a wealthy Tory peer. With about 11 million followers between X and YouTube alone, it’s no mystery why multiple platforms continue to carry her heinous, cracked conspiracy theories about the Macrons; it’s a whale of a money-spinner.
The 219-page lawsuit drills separately into each of the eight podcast episodes from her Becoming Brigitte series aired this year. Those episodes can (still) be found on multiple platforms, which means that tens of millions are still thrilling to her claims that Brigitte Macron was born a man and stole her (still living) brother’s identity; that she fathered her children with an imaginary woman; that her husband is her incestuous son or nephew; that the couple are part “of a very small group of elite oligarchs who routinely practice homosexuality and paedophilia, believe in Baphomet [a satanic figure] and worship a transgender deity”.
Though given verifiable evidence disproving the claims, she doubled down with the podcast series and accompanying X posts.
With news of the lawsuit, her followers have pivoted. Once overnight experts in epidemiology, crypto and elite paedophile gangs operating out of pizza parlours, they are now bringing such expertise to advising Owens on defamation law; counselling that the first amendment is her best protection, and that surely calling a person transgender is not considered an insult among the DEI libtards so where’s the harm?
Some just want a chromosome test already.
Many who question the Macrons’ decision to sue rightly fear Bierce’s sausage machine. Some murmur darkly about the Streisand effect (where efforts to minimise or hide information only serve to escalate it). Or they shrug that them’s the breaks of a public life, as if the couple were too dim to have considered the implications.
Brigitte Macron and relatives have already been through Bierce’s machine. Their French defamation suit against the original conspiracy theorists ended badly this month when an appeals court overturned a ruling ordering the defendants to pay damages, on the basis that their false claims about Macron had been made in “good faith”.
Perhaps the answer to the question “why now?” lies in pages 91 and 92 of the US suit where Owens – “egging on the Macrons” – said in a video last February: “Where’s your lawsuit? Where’s your lawsuit, Brigitte?”
The taunt was picked up by Joe Rogan, often described as the most popular podcaster in the world, who agreed that Brigitte Macron was indeed a man and then said: “[Owens] would be getting sued right now instead of trying to bribe her. Instead of trying to give her money to shut the f**k up, they would sue her.” The Macrons deny offering her any type of bribe or money.
On the face of it, court days featuring the glamour, wealth and power of the Macrons v Owens promise rare entertainment for the masses. Yet there is something poignant about plaintiffs feeling compelled to include a birth announcement of a baby girl and family photographs of Brigitte as a child, of her first communion and of her first wedding in 1974 to prove the truth of her existence as a daughter, wife and mother.
The Macrons have been subjected to “a campaign of global humiliation”, says the suit. “It is invasive, dehumanising and deeply unjust”.
Owens, a mother of four, is unmoved. She continues to double down on her repulsive narrative while, in a classic Maga act of projection, portraying herself as a victim of media defamation and implying that her life is under threat.
Why a US podcaster would target a couple in a country her fans would be unable to find on a map is another question. Whether she is acting alone may be the stuff of another conspiracy theory – but as the woman herself proves hour after hour, anything is possible.
