Trump sues BBC for defamation over editing of pre-riot speech, seeking up to $10B US

U.S. President Donald Trump sued the BBC on Monday for defamation over edited clips of a speech that made it appear he directed supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol, opening an international front in his fight against media coverage he deems untrue or unfair.

Trump accused Britain’s public broadcaster of defaming him by splicing together parts of a Jan. 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 $5 billion US 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 has previously apologized 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.

Stephen Kinnock, MP from Britain’s Labour government, said Tuesday there were no grounds for legal action.

“It’s right that the BBC stands firm on that point,” he told Sky News on Tuesday.

‘Long pattern of deceiving its audience’

Trump, in his lawsuit filed Monday in Miami federal court, said despite its apology the BBC “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 U.K. TV viewers, which lawyers there say could make any payout to Trump politically fraught.

A spokesperson 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.”

A BBC spokesperson told Reuters earlier on Monday that it had “no further contact from President Trump’s lawyers at this point. Our position remains the same.” The broadcaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the lawsuit was filed.

Facing one of the biggest crises in its 103-year history, the BBC has said it has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any of its platforms.

The dispute over the clip, featured on the BBC’s Panorama documentary show shortly before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, sparked a public relations crisis for the broadcaster, leading to the resignations of its two most senior officials.

Trump’s lawyers say the BBC caused him overwhelming reputational and financial harm.

Documentary was never broadcast in U.S.

The documentary drew scrutiny after the leak of a BBC memo by an external standards adviser that raised concerns about how it was edited, part of a wider investigation of political bias at the publicly funded broadcaster.

The documentary was not broadcast in the United States. It aired on BBC One and wav available on BBC’s iPlayer, which is not accessible for North Americans.

Despite, that, the Trump lawsuit argues that “[virtual private network] usage in Florida has skyrocketed since 2024” and that “among the most popular streaming services accessed by viewers using a VPN is BBC’s online streaming platform, BBC iPlayer.”

The lawsuit, however, stated that it was available in the U.S. via a BBC-owned streaming platform called BritBox. It also said Canadian group Blue Ant Media, headquartered in Toronto, had the rights to distribute the documentary in North America.

“Blue Ant aggressively advertised its exclusive distribution of the Panaroma documentary outside of the United Kingdom, further evidencing the intent of the BBC and its strategic partners to disseminate the documentary as widely and into as many streams of commerce and channels of distribution as possible, including Florida,” the claims states.

The BBC did not immediately respond to a question on whether the documentary was available on BritBox or whether Blue Ant Media had sold it to any U.S. broadcaster or streamer.

Trump may have sued in the United States because defamation claims in Britain must be brought within a year of publication, a window that has closed for the Panorama episode. The BBC maintains an office in Florida.

BBC has potential defences if case goes to trial

To overcome the U.S. Constitution’s legal protections for free speech and the press, Trump will need to prove not only that the edit was false and defamatory but also that the BBC knowingly misled viewers or acted recklessly.

The broadcaster could argue the documentary was substantially true and its editing decisions did not create a false impression, legal experts said.

Trump, after all, was the subject of a four-count federal indictment from a special counsel concerning his efforts to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election. The case effectively ended with Trump’s win four years later.

It could also claim the program did not damage Trump’s reputation, given that he completed a remarkable political comeback after the early 2021 riot at the Capitol, when he was impeached by the U.S. House and criticized by several Republican lawmakers.

U.S. broadcast networks have settled with Trump, including CBS and ABC. Trump sued CBS for its coverage centred around an interview with Trump opponent Kamala Harris and ABC for on-air statements made regarding the civil defamation judgment that Trump lost against E. Jean Carroll, who alleged Trump sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s.

Trump has also filed lawsuits against the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and a newspaper in Iowa for various alleged offences. All three outlets deny wrongdoing.

The attack on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021 was aimed at blocking Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential win over Trump in the 2020 U.S. election.