US President Donald Trump has filed a $5 billion defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), accusing the broadcaster of misleadingly editing footage from one of his speeches to falsely suggest that he directly incited violence ahead of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
The lawsuit was filed on Monday in a federal court in Miami, following months of escalating tensions between Trump and the UK public broadcaster over a documentary aired last year.
Allegations over edited speech
The legal action stems from a 2024 BBC Panorama documentary titled “Trump: A Second Chance”, which aired a week before the 2024 US presidential election. According to Trump, the programme used selective editing that made it appear he had urged supporters to “walk down to the Capitol” and “fight like hell” immediately before the riot.
In reality, Trump maintains, the clip spliced together phrases from separate parts of his speech, omitting his actual call for supporters to “cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
BBC Chairman Samir Shah acknowledged on November 10 that the edited footage wrongly gave “the impression of a direct call for violent action.” The broadcaster later issued a second apology but rejected Trump’s demand for financial compensation, triggering the lawsuit.
Trump responds
“I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth,” Trump said on Monday at the White House.
“Literally, they put words in my mouth. They had me saying things that I never said coming out.”
The BBC did not immediately respond to requests for comment following the filing of the suit.
Claims of election interference
Trump’s legal complaint alleges that the documentary was a “brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the election’s outcome” to his detriment. His lawyer argued that the editing amounted to a deliberate distortion of meaning and accused the BBC of maintaining a longstanding pattern of misrepresenting Trump’s speeches.
“This instance of doctoring — in the form of distortion of meaning and splicing of entirely unrelated word sequences — is part of the BBC’s longstanding pattern of manipulating President Trump’s speeches,” the complaint states.
BBC’s response and internal fallout
The BBC met some of Trump’s demands last month by issuing a formal apology and retracting the documentary. The broadcaster’s response followed the unexpected resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness earlier in November.
However, Trump deemed the apology insufficient and increased his compensation demand from $1 billion to $5 billion while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One.
Pattern of legal battles with media outlets
Trump has a long history of taking legal action against media organisations he believes have treated him unfairly. In recent months, several major US networks have agreed to multi-million-dollar settlements:
- CBS paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit alleging election interference over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-candidate Kamala Harris.
- ABC agreed to a similar settlement after host George Stephanopoulos incorrectly stated that Trump had been “found liable for rape” in a lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll. A jury had instead found Trump liable for sexual abuse.
Trump also has ongoing multi-billion-dollar defamation lawsuits in Florida against The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, both of which deny wrongdoing. The Times lawsuit alleges sustained reputational harm, while the Journal case relates to a report claiming Trump sent a crude birthday note to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.
Legal hurdles ahead
Legal experts note significant differences between the BBC case and Trump’s lawsuits against US media outlets. The Panorama documentary was never aired in the United States and was geo-blocked on the BBC’s streaming platforms.
Additionally, Trump must prove that the BBC acted with “actual malice”—meaning it knowingly published false information or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. This standard, established by the US Supreme Court in 1964, sets a high bar for public figures seeking damages in defamation cases.