Right-wing shock jock Steven Crowder tossed a grenade into the conservative webshow world this week when he accused fellow pundit Candace Owens of trying to extort him with details of his divorce—a separation he blamed on his wife.
Days later, Crowder is now on the back foot, with Crowder’s attorney reportedly rebuffing a cease-and-desist letter from Owens, and with Crowder’s ex-wife’s family releasing a statement accusing Crowder of emotional abuse.
Crowder, the host of the show Louder With Crowder, has been in divorce proceedings since 2021, he announced on his show on Tuesday. Crowder claimed he made the announcement in response to veiled threats from rivals on the right—namely Candace Owens, who hosts her own show on The Daily Wire. Crowder played clips from a January episode of Owens’ show, in which Owens attributed a feud between Crowder and The Daily Wire to unspecified personal issues in Crowder’s life.
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Crowder suggested that those comments, plus alleged behind-the-scenes attacks, amounted to extortion, and that Owens was threatening to leak information about his divorce.
“If you’re familiar with the idea of extortion, then you know the feeling well,” Crowder told his audience, going on to claim that “some other issues or inferences have been more pernicious behind the scenes with demands and threats to use this information, which they believe would be so publicly embarrassing to me and my wife in a difficult time that it could be used, knowingly putting my children in harm’s way.”
Owens has denied the extortion allegations, and told The Daily Beast she sent Crowder a cease-and-desist. On Thursday, she said, she received a response from his lawyer stating that she did not have grounds for a defamation lawsuit.
“I sent him a cease and desist based off his claims, which made it very clear that he was accusing me of extortion and heavily insinuating that something happened behind the scenes where I somehow threatened him and his child,” Owens told The Daily Beast. “His lawyer came back and basically said that my claims were not actionable because he was using the term ‘extortion’ as a feeling.”
The attorney’s letter states that “Mr. Crowder’s opinions fall far short of any defamation. At most, he has merely opined comparatively the feeling of certain misconduct to his own present state of being [...] Again, at most they are simply reminiscent in Mr. Crowder’s personal opinion of the specifically referenced type of misconduct.”
A Crowder spokesperson did not return The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
“So essentially he [Crowder] knew he was lying,” Owens alleged. “He knew what people would discern from it, but now he's backtracking it privately by trying to make it seem like [my] video made him feel like it could have been extortion. Which is obviously bullshit, but this is what Steven Crowder does. He lies for a living.”
Owens theorized that Crowder made his announcement now, after his once-ally Owen Benjamin leaked news of Crowder’s divorce this week. She also speculated that the announcement was meant to distract from a recent interview in which a former Crowder employee accused Crowder of censoring him.
Crowder and Owens’ feud dates back to January, when Crowder went public with a job offer he’d received from Owens’ employer, The Daily Wire. Crowder slammed the $50 million deal as a “slave contract” that would subject him to Big Tech censorship, namely because The Daily Wire reserved the right to dock Crowder’s pay if his channel (which frequently promotes racist, sexist, and anti-LGBT material) got demonetized or suspended. Crowder released a recorded phone call with The Daily Wire’s CEO, leading to a counteroffensive from Daily Wire personalities like Owens.
In the clip from Owens’ January show, she described Crowder’s actions as the possible result of personal distress. “Steven has a lot going on, I guess is the best way to say it. He has a lot going on and that should be clear because people don’t do stuff like this if there’s not a lot going on in their life,” Owens said in the clip. She later added that “I am unsure at this moment if it is my place to say more than that. Maybe if I feel, in further defense, something should be said, or maybe if I feel that the public has a right to understand certain circumstances.”
On Thursday, Crowder’s ex-wife Hilary’s family released a statement and video footage to writer Yashar Ali, accusing Crowder of emotional abuse.
“The truth is that Hilary spent years hiding Steven's mentally and emotionally abusive behavior from her friends and family while she attempted to save their marriage. She was the one who was asking to work on their relationship to keep the marriage intact for their unborn children,” the statement read.
The family went on to accuse Crowder of choosing not to be present at the birth of the couple’s twins in 2021. The family also alleged that Crowder had effectively ended the relationship, buying a townhouse, moving out of the couple’s home, cutting Hilary off financially, and hiring a divorce attorney without her knowledge.
The family also released home surveillance footage of Crowder berating his ex-wife while she was heavily pregnant. In the video, Crowder forbids his wife from using their car “because you refuse to do wifely things.”
“The only way out of this is discipline and respect,” he tells her.
Later in the footage, Hilary states “I love you, but your abuse is sick.”
“Watch it. Watch it. Fucking watch it,” he replies.
When she states that she needs space but that she loves him, Crowder replies “I don’t love you. That’s the big problem. I’ve never received love from you.”
In his Tuesday video, Crowder repeatedly states that the divorce was his wife’s decision. In the video, he laments that Texas law allows no-fault divorce.
“This was not my choice. My then-wife decided that she did not want to be married anymore, and in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted,” he says.
