US president Donald Trump has filed a defamation lawsuit against the BBC for selectively editing one of his speeches in an episode of Panorama.
The BBC said documents filed at a court in Florida asked for $5 billion (€4.25 billion) in damages for defamation, as well as the same amount for a claim of violating trade practices.
The 33-page lawsuit reportedly accuses the organisation of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump”, calling it “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 US presidential election.
It also accused the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6th, 2021” in order to “intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said”.
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It said the BBC, despite its apology, “has made no showing of actual remorse for its wrongdoing nor meaningful institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuses.”
A spokesman for the US president’s legal team said in a statement 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 Panorama programme was not shown in the US, but the lawsuit says it can be watched on the BritBox subscription streaming platform.
The BBC is funded through a mandatory licence fee on all TV viewers, which UK lawyers say could make any payout to Mr Trump politically fraught.
The BBC said it would fight the case. “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case. We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings,” a BBC spokesperson said.
The scandal unfolded earlier this year after a leaked memo highlighted concerns about the way clips of Mr Trump’s speech on January 6th, 2021, were spliced together so it appeared he had told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them to “fight like hell”.
[ BBC apologises to Trump over speech edit but rejects compensation claimOpens in new window ]
Mr Trump said the lawsuit was imminent when he spoke at a press conference on Monday afternoon in Washington.
“In a little while, you’ll be seeing I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth literally. They had me saying things that I never said,” he said.
“We’ll be filing that suit probably this afternoon or tomorrow morning.”
After the report, which was written by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, was leaked, BBC chairman Samir Shah apologised on behalf of the BBC over an “error of judgment” and accepted the editing of the 2024 documentary gave “the impression of a direct call for violent action”.
The programme was broadcast a week before the US election in November 2024.
The fallout from the report also led to the resignation of both the director general Tim Davie and the head of news Deborah Turness.
Despite the apology, Mr Trump said he would proceed with legal action for “anywhere between one billion dollars and five billion dollars”.
Mr Trump has a history of suing news organisations in the US and is engaged in legal action with the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
BBC News reported that the broadcaster had set out five main arguments in a letter to Mr Trump’s legal team as to why it did not believe there was a basis for a defamation claim.
The BBC has been contacted for comment. – PA
