- Trump is seeking $5 billion for each of two reasons.
- The BBC faces crises and resignations over the editing of documentaries.
- He admits error in judgment but denies legal basis for the lawsuit.
President Donald Trump on Monday sued the BBC for defamation over edited clips of a speech that made it appear he had ordered his supporters to storm the US Capitol, opening an international front in his fight against media coverage he considers false or unfair.
Trump accused the British public broadcaster of defaming him by stitching together parts of a Jan. 6, 2021, speech, including a section in which he called on his supporters to march to the Capitol and another in which he said “fight like hell.” He omitted a section calling for a peaceful protest.
Trump’s lawsuit alleges that the BBC defamed him and violated a Florida law that prohibits deceptive and unfair business practices. It seeks $5 billion in damages for each of the two counts in the lawsuit.
The BBC apologized to Trump, admitted an error in judgment and acknowledged that editing gave the mistaken impression that it had made a direct call for violent action. But the broadcaster has said there is no legal basis to sue.
Trump, in his lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Miami, said the BBC, despite its apology, “has failed to show any real remorse for its wrongdoings nor to make significant institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuses.”
The BBC is funded through a mandatory licensing fee for all television viewers, which UK lawyers say could make any payment to Trump politically complicated.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement that the BBC “has a long pattern of misleading its audience in its coverage of President Trump, all in the service of its own left-wing political agenda.”
A BBC spokesperson told Reuters earlier on Monday that it had “no further contact with President Trump’s lawyers at this time. Our position remains the same.” The station did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the lawsuit was filed.
The crisis caused resignations
Faced with one of the biggest crises in its 103-year history, the BBC has said it has no plans to broadcast the documentary on any of its platforms.
The dispute over the clip, featured on the BBC’s “Panorama” documentary program shortly before the 2024 presidential election, sparked a public relations crisis for the broadcaster, leading to the resignation of its two senior officials.
Trump’s lawyers say the BBC caused him overwhelming financial and reputational damage.
The documentary came under scrutiny after the leak of a BBC memo by an external standards adviser that raised concerns about how it was edited, part of a wider investigation into political bias at the publicly funded broadcaster.
The documentary was not broadcast in the United States.
Trump may have sued in the United States because defamation suits in Britain must be filed within a year of publication, a window that closed for the “Panorama” episode.
To overcome the US Constitution’s legal protections for freedom of speech and the press, Trump will need to prove not only that the editing 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 claim that the show did not damage Trump’s reputation.
Other media outlets settled with Trump, including CBS and ABC, when Trump sued them following his return to the presidency in the November 2024 election.
Trump has filed lawsuits against the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and an Iowa newspaper, all three of whom have denied wrongdoing.
The attack on the US Capitol in January 2021 was aimed at preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory over Trump in the 2020 US election.
