- Trump is demanding $5 billion for each of the two counts.
- “BBC faces crisis and resignations over documentary editing”.
- Admits an error of judgment but denies the legal basis of the lawsuit.
President Donald Trump sued the BBC on Monday for defamation over edited excerpts of a speech that made it appear he ordered his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol, opening an international front in his fight against media coverage he says is false or unfair.
Trump accused the British public broadcaster of defaming him by splicing together parts of a Jan. 6, 2021, speech, including a section in which he told his supporters to march on the Capitol and another where he said to “fight like hell.” He omitted a section in which he called for peaceful protests.
Trump’s lawsuit alleges that the BBC defamed him and violated a Florida law that prohibits deceptive and unfair business practices. He is seeking $5 billion in damages for each of the two counts.
The BBC apologized to Trump, admitted an error of judgment and acknowledged that the editing gave the false impression that he had made a direct call for violent action. But the network said there was no legal basis to take legal action.
Trump, in his complaint filed Monday in federal court in Miami, said the BBC, despite apologizing, “has failed to demonstrate any real remorse for its wrongdoing or meaningful institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuse.”
The BBC is funded by a mandatory license fee for all viewers, which British lawyers say could make it politically difficult to pay Trump.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement that the BBC “has a long history of misleading its audiences in its coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own left-wing political agenda.”
A BBC spokesperson told Reuters on Monday that it had “no further contact at this stage from President Trump’s lawyers. Our position remains the same.” The broadcaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the complaint was filed.
The crisis led to resignations
Facing one of the biggest crises in its 103-year history, the BBC said it had no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any of its platforms.
The dispute over the clip, featured on the BBC’s documentary program “Panorama” shortly before the 2024 presidential election, sparked a public relations crisis for the channel, leading to the resignation of its two most senior officials.
Trump’s lawyers say the BBC has caused him considerable reputational and financial harm.
The documentary gained attention after a BBC memo was leaked by an external standards adviser which raised concerns about how it had been edited, as part of a wider investigation into political bias within the state-funded channel.
The documentary was not released in the United States.
Trump may have filed the lawsuit in the United States because defamation claims in Britain must be filed within a year of publication, a window that closed for the “Panorama” episode.
To overcome the U.S. Constitution’s legal protections for free speech and the press, Trump will have to prove not only that the edit was false and defamatory, but also that the BBC knowingly misled viewers or acted recklessly.
The broadcaster could argue that the documentary was substantially true and that its editing decisions did not create a false impression, legal experts said. He could also argue that the program did not damage Trump’s reputation.
Other media outlets sided with Trump, including CBS and ABC, when Trump sued them following his victory in the November 2024 election.
Trump filed lawsuits against the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and an Iowa newspaper, all three of which denied any wrongdoing.
The attack on the US Capitol in January 2021 was aimed at stopping Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory over Trump in the 2020 US election.
