Trump has filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC, accusing the broadcaster of defamation and election interference by allegedly manipulating footage of his January 6 speech.
US President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), accusing the broadcaster of manipulating footage from his January 6, 2021 speech and reviving controversy over its coverage of the US Capitol riot.
Filed on Monday in federal court in Miami, the lawsuit seeks “damages in an amount not less than $5,000,000,000” for each of two counts, alleging defamation and violations of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
The 79-year-old Republican leader said earlier the same day that legal action was imminent, claiming the BBC had “put words in my mouth” and suggesting “they used AI or something.”
Edited documentary and legal claims
The lawsuit centres on a documentary aired last year, ahead of the 2024 election, on the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Panorama. The programme included footage that spliced together two separate parts of Trump’s January 6 speech, making it appear he explicitly urged supporters to attack the Capitol as lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
“The formerly respected and now disgraced BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement to AFP. “The BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda,” the statement added.
Trump’s lawsuit alleges the edited speech was “fabricated and aired by the Defendants one week before the 2024 Presidential Election in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
BBC response and fallout
The British Broadcasting Corporation, whose audience extends far beyond the United Kingdom, faced internal turmoil last month after a media report renewed scrutiny of the edited clip. The controversy led to the resignation of the BBC director-general and the organisation’s top news executive.
The BBC has denied Trump’s claims of legal defamation, although chairman Samir Shah sent Trump a letter of apology. Shah also told a UK parliamentary committee last month that the broadcaster should have acted sooner to acknowledge its mistake after the error was disclosed in a memo later leaked to The Daily Telegraph.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions Trump has taken against media organisations in recent years, several of which have resulted in multi-million-dollar settlements.
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