U.S. President Donald Trump has filed a massive lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), seeking at least $10 billion in damages over a documentary he claims deceptively edited his speech before the January 6th Capitol riot.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Miami, alleges the broadcaster defamed Trump and violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. It demands a minimum of $5 billion for each of the two counts.
The case centers on a BBC “Panorama” documentary that aired before the 2024 election. According to the suit, the program spliced together two separate parts of Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech, creating the false impression that he explicitly instructed supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol while lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Trump, 79, previewed the lawsuit earlier Monday, asserting the BBC had “put words in my mouth” and speculated, “they used AI or something.”
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team sharply criticized the broadcaster in a statement to AFP: “The formerly respected and now disgraced BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election.”
The statement further accused the BBC of “a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda.”
