WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the BBC on Monday. Trump accuses the British network of defamation alongside deceptive and unfair trade practices. The president filed the suit in a Miami federal court, seeking $10 billion in damages.
The 33-page civil complaint accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump.” The suit additionally labels the network’s actions as “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Trump: A Second Chance?, aired as part of Panorama on BBC One, aired one week before the election.
The complaint asserts that the documentary was edited to make it seem that during his Jan. 6, 2021, speech outside the White House, Trump directly urged his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol.
“The Panorama Documentary falsely depicted President Trump telling supporters: ‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore," the suit argues. “President Trump never uttered this sequence of words.”
The BBC apologized to the president last month over the editing of the speech. Despite the apology, the broadcaster denies claims of defaming Trump, even after he threatened legal action.
BBC chairman Sami Shah described the edit as an “error of judgement.” The chairman’s statement triggered resignations from the network’s top executive and its head of news.
The president filed his suit in Florida. This was due to deadlines to file in British courts had expired over a year ago.
“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?” the president mentioned on Monday 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.”
However, legal experts have proposed potential challenges to the case being filed in the U.S. because documentary was not shown in the country.
