President Donald Trump on Monday sued the British Broadcasting Corporation for up to $10 billion, alleging it defamed him by improperly editing footage of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech in a 2024 documentary.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Miami, argues the BBC spliced together portions of Trump’s remarks to show him explicitly encouraging violence at the U.S. Capitol.
“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,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team wrote 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 White House declined to comment.
In November, the BBC apologized for the edit but rejected any legal basis for a defamation claim over the documentary episode, “Trump: A Second Chance?,” which aired in October 2024 ahead of last year’s presidential election.
The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the suit was filed Monday, but said earlier in the day that it had not had any contact with Trump’s legal team. “While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim,” the BBC wrote on Nov. 13.
BBC Director General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness resigned in November amid the controversy, which began after the Telegraph, a British newspaper, published a whistleblower report from Michael Prescott, a former BBC editorial standards adviser.
“I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth — literally to put words in my mouth,” Trump said earlier Monday. “They had me saying things that I never said coming out. I guess they used AI or something. So we’ll be bringing that lawsuit. A lot of people are asking, when are you bringing that lawsuit? Even the media can’t believe that one day they actually put terrible words in my mouth.” The complaint does not mention artificial intelligence.
Legal experts have said Trump faces significant hurdles in proving defamation, particularly the requirement to show the BBC knowingly and intentionally published false information.
“Even if Trump could point to inaccuracies in the documentary, mere mistakes are not enough; he’d need evidence that the BBC at least subjectively doubted the truth of what it published,” Jonathan Peters, a media law expert and associate dean at the University of Georgia’s journalism school, previously wrote in an email.
Mark Stephens, a lawyer at the London-based firm Howard Kennedy, noted that the one-year statute of limitations to sue for defamation in the U.K. expired in October.
The suit not only alleges defamation, but also a violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, seeking $5 billion in damages for each charge, and requests a jury trial.
While the BBC has maintained that the documentary never aired in the United States and isn’t available on any of its platforms now, Trump’s lawyers allege they have standing to sue in U.S. federal court because the program could possibly have been seen by U.S. subscribers of BritBox, which is owned by the BBC. The lawsuit also says U.S. residents could have accessed the BBC’s U.K.-only streaming service, iPlayer, through a virtual private network, or VPN.
Trump has sued other news organizations, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal; litigation is ongoing in both suits. He also secured settlements, including $16 million from CBS News, for what the president alleged was unfair editing of an interview with Kamala Harris, as well as $15 million from ABC News.
His administration has also attempted to ban the Associated Press from covering certain White House events, after it refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” following Trump’s executive order to rename the body of water. The administration has blocked reporters from accessing a key corridor in the White House’s West Wing and saw a mass exodus of mainstream press from the Pentagon after asking reporters to sign new restrictions for covering the Defense Department in person.
correctionA previous version of this article said that President Donald Trump filed a $5 billion defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation. The suit was for $10 billion: $5 billion for defamation and $5 billion for a violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
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