The BBC's edit allegedly made Trump appear to encourage the Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021. Photo / Getty Images
Donald Trump has filed a US$10 billion ($17.2b) lawsuit against the BBC, accusing the broadcaster of defamation.
The US President’s lawyers filed court papers in Florida on Monday over a doctored speech that made Trump appear to encourage the Capitol Hill riot.
In November, the Telegraph disclosed that Panorama spliced together parts of an address given by Trump on January 6, 2021, before some of his supporters attacked the US Capitol building. The edit omitted Trump’s calls for people to march “peacefully”.
Trump’s legal filing claimed the doctored speech, broadcast a week before the 2024 election, was designed to interfere with the vote and is in keeping with the “disgraced” corporation’s “Leftist political agenda”.
The US President accused the BBC of defamation and of violating Florida’s deceptive and unfair trade practices act. He is seeking US$5b in damages for each count.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team told the Telegraph: “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.
“The BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own Leftist political agenda.”
Trump’s “powerhouse” lawsuit will hold the BBC accountable “for its defamation and reckless election interference just as he has held other fake news mainstream media responsible for their wrongdoing”, the spokesman added.
Speaking in the Oval Office earlier on Monday, Trump said: “Literally, they put words in my mouth.”
He added: “They actually have me speaking with words that I never said, and they got caught because I believe somebody at BBC said this is so bad, it has to be reported. Let’s call [it] fake news.”
The Panorama revelations prompted a crisis at the broadcaster, triggering the resignation of two senior BBC executives.
The President’s personal lawyers asked the BBC to apologise, retract the report and pay compensation, or face legal action.
They wrote in a legal filing on November 9: “Due to their salacious nature, the fabricated statements that were aired by the BBC have been widely disseminated throughout various digital mediums, which have reached tens of millions of people worldwide.
“Consequently, the BBC has caused President Trump to suffer overwhelming financial and reputational harm.”
White House officials also condemned the video.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said: “This purposefully dishonest, selectively edited clip by the BBC is further evidence that they are total, 100 per cent fake news that should no longer be worth the time on the television screens of the great people of the United Kingdom.”
Trump’s lawyers gave the BBC a deadline of November 14 to respond to their demands.
Although the corporation apologised and withdrew the report, it made clear that it would not pay Trump any compensation.
When the broadcaster refused to pay, Trump told The Telegraph that he would launch legal action for up to US$5b.
Legal experts believe that Trump faces an uphill battle to win a defamation case.
It is much tougher to win a libel case in the US, where freedom of speech concerns have more weight than most other arguments.
Trump’s real motivation may be getting the BBC to soften its coverage, according to Michael J. Socolow, a professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine.
“I think the money is definitely secondary to getting the BBC to treat him differently,” he said.
Trump, however, has twice won sizeable payouts from US news organisations.
In 2024, ABC News agreed to pay US$15m to settle a defamation lawsuit after George Stephanopoulos, its star anchor, falsely said the US President had been found “liable for rape”.
In fact, a jury in a civil case had determined that Trump was liable for “sexual abuse”, which has a specific definition under New York law.
CBS News paid US$16m in July to settle a suit over the broadcaster’s edit of an interview with Kamala Harris, which Trump argued had been done to make her sound more coherent.
During his address on January 6, the US President said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
Roughly an hour later, he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell.”
In Panorama’s version, the edit made the clips sound like a single passage: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol... and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
After the Telegraph’s reporting, Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, and Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News, both resigned.
The revelations were contained in an internal whistleblower report which also identified anti-Israel and pro-trans bias inside the BBC.
A BBC spokesman said: “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case. We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”
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