- Trump is seeking $5 billion on each of the two counts.
- BBC faces crisis, resignations over documentary editing.
- Admits error of judgment but denies legal basis for action.
President Donald Trump sued the BBC on Monday for defamation over edited excerpts of a speech that appeared to lead his supporters to storm the US Capitol, opening an international front in his fight against media coverage he deems untrue or unfair.
Trump accused Britain’s public broadcaster of defaming him by combining parts of a January 6, 2021 speech, including one where he told his supporters to march on Capitol Hill and another where he said “fight like hell.” He skipped a section calling for peaceful protest.
Trump’s lawsuit claims the BBC defamed him and violated a Florida law that prohibits deceptive and unfair trade practices. He is seeking $5 billion in damages for each of the two counts of the lawsuit.
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 broadcaster said there was no legal basis for a lawsuit.
Trump, in his lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Miami, said the BBC, despite its apology, “has not shown any genuine remorse for its wrongdoing or meaningful institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuses.”
The BBC is funded through a compulsory license fee on all viewers, which British lawyers say could make any payment to Trump politically fraught.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said in a statement that the BBC “has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in its coverage of President Trump, all in the service of its own left-wing political agenda.”
A BBC spokesman told Reuters earlier on Monday that it “has no further contact with President Trump’s lawyers at this time. Our position remains the same”. The broadcaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the lawsuit was filed.
The crisis led to resignations
Facing one of the biggest crises in its 103-year history, the BBC said it did not intend to rebroadcast the documentary on any of its platforms.
The controversy over the clip, which aired on the BBC’s documentary program “Panorama” just before the 2024 presidential election, sparked a public relations crisis for the broadcaster, leading to the resignations of its two most senior officials.
Trump’s lawyers say the BBC has caused him massive reputational and financial damage.
The documentary came under scrutiny after a BBC memo was leaked by an external standards adviser raising concerns about how it was edited, part of a wider investigation into political bias at the public broadcaster.
The documentary was not broadcast in the United States.
Trump may have sued the US because defamation claims in Britain must be brought 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 would have 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 its editing decisions did not create a false impression, legal experts said. He could also claim that the program did not harm Trump’s reputation.
Other media outlets settled with Trump, including CBS and ABC, when Trump sued them after his re-election victory in November 2024.
Trump has filed lawsuits against the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and an Iowa newspaper, all three of which 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.
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