Five years ago, Candace Owens was a mid-tier political operative working for Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. Now she’s a globally famous conservative firebrand with one of the fastest-growing independent media platforms in the U.S., raking in cash through controversy. But the same contrarian playbook that launched her solo career now threatens the media empire she built. Her company generates up to $10 million in revenues per year, according to an analysis by Fortune, implying that the company’s valuation would be multiples of that.
The conservative podcaster and provocateur is facing a high-stakes defamation lawsuit filed by French President Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte Macron, the first lady. The suit is set to test whether the controversy-as-currency oeuvre that made Owens rich and gave her a media brand that reaches tens of millions of people can survive what experts say will be an immensely costly legal battle.
The 219-page complaint, filed in Delaware Superior Court in July 2025, accuses Owens of orchestrating a “campaign of global humiliation” by promoting the conspiracy theory that Brigitte Macron was born male.
Interestingly, the suit alleges that spreading false information is essentially Owens’s business model.
The complaint names three defendants: Candace Owens personally, Candace Owens LLC (her Delaware company managing social media and ad revenue), and GeorgeTom Inc. (presumably named after her husband, George Farmer, who is directly involved in the business and operates her website and podcast distribution). In naming all three parties, the suit takes aim not only at Owens personally, but also her entire known business infrastructure.
“If ever there was a clear-cut case of defamation, this is it. Relying on discredited falsehoods originally presented by a self-proclaimed spiritual medium and so-called investigative journalist, Ms. Owens both promoted and expanded on those falsehoods and invented new ones, all designed to cause maximum harm to the Macrons and maximize attention and financial gain for herself,” a spokesperson for Clare Locke told Fortune in a statement. These claims are also reflected in the complaint against Owens.
“Despite the irrefutable evidence that was provided to her on multiple occasions, she not only persisted but doubled down on her attacks. To make matters worse, many others have republished her lies, thereby increasing their global audience and the emotional and reputational harm they have caused. It is clear that for Ms. Owens truth is irrelevant. This lawsuit is about bringing that truth to light and seeking justice for the Macrons by holding Ms. Owens to account. We are confident that the facts are on our side and look forward to proving her liability in court,” the firm said.
Owens did not respond to repeated Fortune requests for comment.
Fortune studied public business records of Owens’s business holdings, researched the podcast economy, and spoke to legal and media experts to develop insight into what Owens stands to lose in her legal battle.
Understanding what’s at stake starts with the scope and structure of her business empire. Her brand sits squarely inside the booming conservative independent media market, which has exploded over the past five years. The scale of that economy helps explain how Owens has accumulated substantial wealth through her media ventures.
The brands fueling this surge, from Birch Gold Group (which spent roughly $10.8 million on conservative podcast ads over the past year) to PreBorn (an antiabortion group that spent $13.1 million since 2023), view conservative hosts as indispensable marketing channels. Many of these companies lack mainstream advertising avenues; their customer base lives inside this ecosystem.
For Owens, this creates a direct financial incentive: The more provocative the content, the higher the audience engagement, and the higher the ad rates. Conspiratorial and provocative content “blows up because people want to go deep and ‘uncover’ hidden truths and be a part of the investigation. That’s what Candace is doing, and that’s what she was doing with the Macron claims,” Angelo Carusone, president and chairman of left-leaning media watchdog group Media Matters, told Fortune. Put simply: Controversy drives views, views drive sponsors, and sponsors fund her entire operation.
Owens’s star power lies in her dynamism. The former Democrat founded the “BLEXIT” movement (a campaign for Black voters to embrace conservatism and leave the party), and is what Carusone calls a “talented storyteller.” She is also somewhat of a Renaissance woman. “She is appealing to a segment and satisfying a demand right now, which is that you can be a modern woman and a mom, but also embrace traditional roles and ask hard-hitting questions and not be shot down for it,” he said.
Her podcast is the financial engine. According to Bloomberg, Owens’s show had the highest ad density among eight major conservative broadcasters studied—more than 90% of episodes contain host-read ads. She has roughly 60 sponsors in rotation, featuring the marquee names of the conservative advertiser universe: PreBorn; Birch Gold Group; the Wellness Company, which promotes ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as pandemic-preparedness medications; Seven Weeks Coffee, which donates 10% of purchases to crisis pregnancy centers; and PureTalk, a conservative cellular carrier.
Her husband, who oversees much of the business, told Bloomberg that only one advertiser, he claimed, has pulled out in the past year.
Structurally, Owens runs her business through two Delaware-registered entities: Candace Owens LLC, which manages her social accounts, and GeorgeTom Inc., which produces her podcast. She employs fewer than 20 people, according to Delaware business filings reviewed by Fortune. Though the exact number of employees isn’t disclosed, Owens’s husband is a key player in her operation.
The Macron complaint alleges Farmer is connected to GeorgeTom Inc., the Delaware corporation operating Owens’s website and podcast. While ownership percentages aren’t disclosed, the family businesses appear to be intertwined—and so, potentially, are the assets. Owens herself has been somewhat upfront about Farmer’s role in her venture, specifically as it relates to his responsibilities.
“She has really been fairly firm in that she doesn’t touch the business, she doesn’t think about the business and mechanics. She really relies on George Farmer,” Carusone told Fortune. Instead, he said, her focus is on being the talent and nexus of the Candace brand.
This disconnectedness, Carusone said, may contribute to her seeming disregard for libel suits. “Whatever she’s done structurally, she doesn’t seem terribly concerned about her entire life falling apart,” he added.
Farmer’s work experience is likely the driving force of this ease and may prove to be a saving grace for Owens.
“The genesis of Parler was that it was supposed to be a social media place that was not going to be susceptible to the types of economic, financial, and social pressures that the elites, the tech companies, the liberals, were putting onto tech at the time,” he told Fortune. “That experience, there was a recognition internally that they needed to do something, or they wanted to do something that was going to be that would allow them to operate unabated by traditional, typical market forces. And obviously that unraveled in a lot of ways, but I don’t think it would be shocking to me if lessons incorporated from that did not factor into whatever Farmer and Owens are doing now to insulate themselves from, from certain types of civil accountability.”
While the exact methods through which Owens and Farmer may have protected their assets remain unknown, Carusone suggested that one option available to the pair may be to set up a network of trusts to insulate their finances.
Jones’s representatives did not respond to a Fortune request for comment.
The biggest hurdle the Macrons face is that they must prove that Owens made her statements about the French first lady with “actual malice,” Sonja West, first amendment expert and law professor at the University of Georgia, told Fortune. That means they will have to show that Owens either knew what she was saying was false or acted with reckless disregard as to whether her statements were false.
“But even if Owens can show that she believed her statements were true when she first made them, the fact that she has continued to repeat them, even after the Macrons pushed back with potential evidence showing their falsity, could weaken her defense,” West said. “Even though we have broad protections against defamation lawsuits by public figures, the Supreme Court has said that we don’t have a First Amendment right to deliberately ignore evidence that contradicts our claims.”
“Given that she had no evidence, because there was no evidence, it’s easy to see how the plaintiffs will be able to prove actual malice, and then that opens the possibility of getting not just presumed damages, but punitive damages,” Lyrissa Lidsky, First Amendment law specialist and professor at the University of Florida law school, told Fortune. “So the question is, are juries tired of media irresponsibility in a way that might make them want to send a message?”
Even if the Macrons are awarded enormous financial compensation in the suit, a court victory won’t silence Owens. Any restriction on Owens’s future speech, according to Lidsky, would constitute a “prior restraint.”
“Just because you’ve been irresponsible in your speech in the past doesn’t mean that we have judicial orders saying you can’t speak in the future,” she explained.
After all, Jones continues to be in business despite declaring bankruptcy, suggesting that even the most staggering financial penalties can’t derail the economics of right-wing media.
And the trial itself will likely bring in substantial revenue for Owens from the controversy alone by driving engagement through viewership with her various monetized media channels. Because of this, Carusone believes the conservative online personality may even come out on top, even if she loses the lawsuit.
“She’s one of the rare people that will not just manage to get through it, but end up significantly better off as a result,” he said.
