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American president Donald Trump filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking $10 billion in damages from BBCaccusing the British broadcaster of defamation as well as misleading and unfair trade practices.
The 33-page lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, fraudulent, disparaging, inflammatory and malicious portrayal of President Trump”, calling it a “brazen attempt to interfere and influence” the 2024 US presidential election.
He accused the BBC of “combining two completely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021.” to “deliberately misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.”
The suit, filed in a Florida court, seeks $5 billion in defamation and $5 billion in unfair trade practices.
The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
Publisher told last month Trump for editing the January 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejected claims it had defamed him, after Trump threatened legal action.
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BBC chairman Samir Shah called it an “error in judgement”, prompting the resignations of the BBC’s chief executive and news presenters.
The speech was given in front of some of Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol while Congress was poised to confirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, which Trump falsely claimed was stolen from him.
The BBC broadcast a one-hour documentary entitled Trump: Second chance? – days before the 2024 US presidential election. He combined three quotes from two parts of a 2021 speech, delivered nearly an hour apart, into what appeared to be a single quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the cut parts was a segment where Trump said he wanted supporters to protest peacefully.
Trump said earlier Monday that he was suing the BBC “for putting words in my mouth.”
“They actually put horrible words in my mouth about January 6th that I didn’t say, and those are nice words that I said, right?” the president said without prompting during an appearance in the Oval Office. “Those are nice words, they speak of patriotism and all the good things I said. They didn’t say that, but they said horrible words.”
The president’s lawsuit was filed in Florida. The deadlines for initiating proceedings before the British courts expired more than a year ago.
Legal experts have outlined possible challenges to the case in the US given that the documentary has not been shown in the country.
The lawsuit said people in the US could watch original BBC content, including the “Panorama” series, which included a documentary, using the subscription streaming platform BritBox or a virtual private network service.
The 103-year-old BBC is a national institution funded by an annual subscription of £174.50 ($230) paid by every household watching live TV or BBC content. Bound by its charter to be impartial, it usually faces particularly intense scrutiny and criticism from both conservatives and liberals.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
