MIAMI (Reuters): US President Donald Trump has filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, accusing the British public broadcaster of misleadingly editing footage of his January 6, 2021 speech in a way that suggested he encouraged supporters to storm the US Capitol.
The lawsuit, filed on Monday in Miami federal court, said that the BBC spliced together remarks in which Trump urged supporters to march to the Capitol and said “fight like hell,” while omitting a section where he called for peaceful protest.
Trump claims the edit falsely portrayed him as making a direct call for violence. Trump is seeking $5 billion in damages on each of two counts, alleging defamation and violations of a Florida law barring deceptive and unfair trade practices. In the filing, he said the BBC, despite issuing an apology, “has made no showing of actual remorse for its wrongdoing nor meaningful institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuses.”
The BBC has acknowledged an error of judgment and apologised, admitting the edit gave a mistaken impression. However, the broadcaster has said there is no legal basis for the lawsuit.
A BBC spokesperson said earlier that the organisation had received no further contact from Trump’s lawyers and that its position remained unchanged. The disputed clip appeared in a “Panorama” documentary aired shortly before the 2024 US presidential election. The controversy triggered a major crisis at the BBC, leading to the resignations of its two most senior officials.
The broadcaster has said it has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any platform. Trump’s legal team said the BBC had caused him severe reputational and financial harm and accused the broadcaster of a long-standing pattern of deceptive coverage driven by political bias. The documentary came under scrutiny after a memo by an external standards adviser, later leaked, raised concerns about its editing as part of a wider investigation into political bias at the publicly funded broadcaster. The documentary was not broadcast in the United States.
