Photo: Alamy
President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Monday seeking $10 billion in damages from the BBC, accusing the British broadcaster of defamation and deceptive and unfair trade practices over its editing of a documentary aired ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
The 33-page complaint, filed in a Florida court, alleges the BBC broadcast a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump,” calling the program “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the election.
The lawsuit claims the BBC “splic[ed] together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021” to “intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.” Trump is seeking $5 billion in damages for defamation and an additional $5 billion for unfair trade practices.
The publicly funded broadcaster apologized to Trump last month for editing the Jan. 6 speech but rejected claims that it defamed him. BBC Chairman Samir Shah described the edit as an “error of judgment,” a controversy that led to the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.
The speech at issue was delivered on Jan. 6, 2021, before a protest at the U.S. Capitol as Congress prepared to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. The BBC aired the documentary “Trump: A Second Chance?” before the 2024 election.
The film combined three quotes from two separate portions of President Trump’s Jan. 6 speech, delivered nearly an hour apart, into what appeared to be a single statement in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” The edit omitted a section in which Trump said he wanted supporters to protest peacefully.
“They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with Jan. 6 that I didn’t say, and they’re beautiful words, that I said, right?” President Trump said during an appearance in the Oval Office. “They’re beautiful words, talking about patriotism and all of the good things that I said. They didn’t say that, but they put terrible words.”