A Delaware judge ruled that Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, can pursue their defamation lawsuit against two companies linked to right-wing podcaster Candace Owens, but not against Owens herself.

Superior Court Judge Sheldon Rennie found in a Tuesday order that his court lacked jurisdiction over Owens, who lives in Tennessee.

The case against the businesses, Candace Owens LLC and Georgetom Inc., can continue for now, because both are registered in Delaware.

Rennie put off ruling on Owens’ motion to dismiss the Macrons’ litigation until the parties had briefed him further on how French defamation law and statutes of limitation intersect with US law.

The Macrons brought the lawsuit in July against Owens and the two Delaware-registered businesses associated with her, over what they called her lie-filled “campaign of global humiliation”, including the claim that France’s first lady was born a male

Owens thanked the judge in a social media statement, saying the case “represents one of the grossest, legal overreaches by a foreign government leader in human history — a sitting President’s attempt to personally bankrupt a single podcaster from outside the nation in which he governs”

In the lawsuit, the Macrons said Owens touted false claims and conspiracy theories against them “to promote her independent platform, gain notoriety, and make money.”

The complaint at the center of the case was filed in Delaware Superior Court, and the couple said Owens has waged a lie-filled “campaign of global humiliation” to promote her podcast and expand her “frenzied” fan base.

Among the lies, the Macrons said, was the claim that Brigitte Macron, 72, was born Jean-Michel Trogneux, the name of her older brother.

“Owens has dissected their appearance, their marriage, their friends, their family, and their personal history — twisting it all into a grotesque narrative designed to inflame and degrade,” the complaint said.

“The result,” the complaint added, “is relentless bullying on a worldwide scale.”

Owens addressed the case on her podcast, saying, “This lawsuit is littered with factual inaccuracies,” and part of an “obvious and desperate public relations strategy” to smear her character.

She also said she had not known a lawsuit was coming, although lawyers for both sides had been communicating since January.

A spokesperson for Owens described the lawsuit itself as an effort to bully her, after Brigitte Macron rejected Owens’ repeated requests for an interview.

“This is a foreign government attacking the First Amendment rights of an American independent journalist,” the spokesperson said.

The Macrons, in a joint statement released by their lawyers, said they sued only after Owens rejected three demands that she retract defamatory statements.

“Ms. Owens’s campaign of defamation was plainly designed to harass and cause pain to us and our families and to garner attention and notoriety,” the Macrons said. “We gave her every opportunity to back away from these claims, but she refused.”

Owens has more than 6.9 million followers on X and more than 4.5 million YouTube subscribers.

The Macrons’ lawsuit focuses on the eight-part podcast “Becoming Brigitte,” which has more than 2.3 million YouTube views, and on X posts linked to it.

According to the Macrons, the series spread “verifiably false and devastating lies,” including that Brigitte Macron stole another person’s identity and transitioned to female, and that the Macrons are blood relatives committing incest.

The complaint discusses the circumstances in which the Macrons met, when the now 47-year-old president was a high school student and Brigitte was a teacher.

It said their relationship “remained within the bounds of the law.”

Baseless speculation about Brigitte Macron’s gender began surfacing in 2021, according to the complaint, and the topic has been discussed on popular podcasts hosted by Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan, who have many conservative followers.

In September, Brigitte won a lawsuit in a French court against two women, including a self-described medium, who contributed to spreading rumors about her gender.

An appeals court overturned that decision this month, and Brigitte Macron has appealed to France’s highest court.