President Donald Trump sued the BBC for at least $10 billion in damages over edited clips of a speech that made it appear he directed supporters to storm the US Capitol, opening an international front in his fight against media coverage he deems untrue or unfair.
Trump accused Britain’s publicly owned broadcaster of defaming him by splicing together parts of a January 6, 2021, speech, including one section where he told supporters to march on the Capitol and another where he said “fight like hell”. It omitted a section in which he called for peaceful protest.
Trump’s lawsuit alleges the BBC defamed him and violated a Florida law that bars deceptive and unfair trade practices. He is seeking at least $5bn in damages for each of the lawsuit’s two counts.
The BBC said it would defend the case and would not make any further comment.
It had previously apologised to Trump, admitted an error of judgment and acknowledged that the edit gave the mistaken impression that he had made a direct call for violent action. But it has said there is no legal basis to sue.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer said any legal action was a matter for the corporation but the government defended “the principle of a strong, independent BBC as a trusted, relied-upon national broadcaster, reporting without fear or favour”.
Starmer has gone to great lengths to cultivate a solid relationship with Trump.
Trump, in his lawsuit filed on Monday in Miami federal court, 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”.
The BBC is funded through a mandatory licence fee on all TV viewers, which UK lawyers and analysts say could make any payout to Trump politically fraught. It had total revenue of 5.9bn pounds ($7.9bn) in its last financial year, including the licence fee and commercial income.
A spokesman for Trump’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 lawsuit poses one of the biggest threats to the British Broadcasting Corporation in its 103-year history, and has been seized on by critics and rivals who object to its perceived liberal stance and its funding through the licence.
The dispute over the clip, featured on the BBC’s “Panorama” documentary show shortly before the 2024 presidential election, sparked a public relations crisis for the broadcaster, leading to the resignations of its two most senior bosses.
Trump’s lawyers say the BBC caused him overwhelming reputational and financial harm.
The BBC has said the documentary was not broadcast in the US.
The lawsuit, however, stated that it was available in the US via a BBC-owned streaming platform called BritBox.
The BBC did not respond to a question on BritBox.
The edit came to wide prominence after the Daily Telegraph, a critic of the broadcaster, published a BBC memo by an external standards adviser that raised concerns about the programme as part of a wider investigation of political bias at the broadcaster.
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