defamation

WASHINGTON — President Trump filed a lawsuit Monday seeking $10 billion in damages from the BBC, accusing the British broadcaster of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices.

The 33-page lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump,” calling it “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

It accused the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021” in order to “intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.”

The lawsuit, filed in a Florida court, seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.

The BBC said it would defend the case.

“We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings,” it said in a statement.

The broadcaster apologized last month to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejected claims it had defamed him, after Trump threatened legal action.

BBC chairman Samir Shah had called it an “error of judgment,” which triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.

The speech took place before some of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.

The BBC had broadcast the hourlong documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

Trump said earlier Monday that he was suing the BBC “for putting words in my mouth.”

“They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with Jan. 6 that I didn’t say, and they’re beautiful words, that I said, right?” the president said unprompted during an appearance in the Oval Office. “They’re beautiful words, talking about patriotism and all of the good things that I said. They didn’t say that, but they put terrible words.”

The president’s lawsuit was filed in Florida. Deadlines to bring the case in British courts expired more than a year ago.

Legal experts have brought up potential challenges to a case in the U.S. given that the documentary was not shown in the country.

The lawsuit alleges that people in the U.S. can watch the BBC’s original content, including the “Panorama” series, which included the documentary, by using the subscription streaming platform BritBox or a virtual private network service.

The 103-year-old BBC is a national institution funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds ($230) paid by every household that watches live TV or BBC content. Bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial, it typically faces especially intense scrutiny and criticism from both conservatives and liberals.

Dec. 16 (UPI) — President Donald Trump is suing the BBC for $10 billion, alleging it intentionally misrepresented a speech he gave before the Jan. 6 storming of Capitol Hill in order to influence the result of the 2024 presidential election.

The lawsuit was filed in a Florida court on Monday, more than a month after Trump threatened to bring litigation against Britain’s public broadcaster over the editing of a speech he gave to supporters in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, in the documentary Trump: A Second Chance.

Trump’s lawyers described the documentary’s depiction of him as “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory and malicious,” alleging it was aired “in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”

The suit is for $5 billion in damages, plus interest, costs, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and other relief the court finds appropriate.

The BBC declined to comment Tuesday but vowed it would fight the case.

“As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case. We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings,” said a spokesman.

The Panorama documentary aired in Britain on Oct. 28, 2024, just days ahead of the Nov. 5 election. The BBC stresses it was not broadcast in the United States and that it did not make it available to view there.

In the documentary, video of Trump’s speech was edited to piece together two comments the president made about 50 minutes apart, while omitting other parts of his speech.

“[T]he BBC “intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers around the world by splicing together two entirely separate parts of Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021,” his lawyers state in the lawsuit.

“The Panorama Documentary deliberately omitted another critical part of the Speech in such a manner as to intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.”

The claim refers to the splicing together of excerpts lifted from the video that made it sound as if Trump was inciting his supporters to march on the Capitol and fight:

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell,” was what viewers of the program saw, when Trump’s actual words were, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

It wasn’t until 50 minutes later in the speech that Trump made the comments about fighting.

The infraction went unnoticed until early November when The Telegraph published an exclusive on a leaked internal BBC memo in which a former external ethics adviser allegedly suggested that the documentary edited Trump’s speech to make it appear he directed the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.

Following the report, the BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie, and head of news, Deborah Turness, resigned.

BBC chairman Samir Shah immediately apologized for what he called an unintentional “error of judgment.”

After Trump wrote the BBC demanding a correction, compensation and threatening a $1 billion lawsuit, the corporation formally apologized and issued a retraction that was the lead story across all of its news platforms on television, radio and online — but said it strongly disagreed “there is a basis for a defamation claim.”

To win the case, Trump’s legal team would need to convince the court the program had caused Trump “overwhelming financial and reputational harm.”

The BBC has said that since the program was not broadcast in the United States or available to view there, Trump was not harmed by it and the choices voters made in the election were not affected as he was re-elected days after.

However, Trump’s legal team alleges the BBC had a deal with a third-party media company that had rights to air the documentary outside of the United Kingdom.

The blunder has reignited a furious national debate about the BBC’s editorial impartiality and the institution itself, which is funded by a $229 annual license that households with a TV must pay.

It also comes as the future of the BBC is under review, with the renewal date of its royal charter approaching on the centenary of its founding in 2027.

Trump has won out-of-court settlements in a series of disputes with U.S. broadcasters, although largely at significantly reduced sums than those sought in the original lawsuit.

In July, CBS settled a $20 billion claim out of court for $16 million over an interview with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris that aired four weeks before the election on Nov. 5.

ABC News paid Trump $15 million and apologized to settle a defamation suit over comments by presenter George Stephanopoulos that incorrectly stated Trump was “liable for rape.”

In 2022, CNN fought and successfully defended a $475 million suit alleging it had defamed Trump by dubbing his claim the 2020 election was stolen from him as the “Big Lie.” The judge ruled it did not meet the legal standard of defamation.

He has live cases pending cases against the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

US President Donald Trump has filed a $5bn (£3.7bn) lawsuit against the BBC over an edit of his 6 January 2021 speech in a Panorama documentary.

Trump accused the broadcaster of defamation and of violating a trade practices law, according to court documents filed in Florida.

The BBC apologised to Trump last month, but rejected his demands for compensation and disagreed there was any “basis for a defamation claim”.

Trump’s legal team accused the BBC of defaming him by “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech”. The BBC has not yet responded to the lawsuit.

Trump said last month that he planned to sue the BBC for the documentary, which aired in the UK ahead of the 2024 US election.

“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters of his plans. “They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”

In his speech on 6 January 2021, before a riot at the US Capitol, Trump told a crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

More than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell.”

In the Panorama programme, a clip showed him as saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

The BBC acknowledged that the edit had given “the mistaken impression” he had “made a direct call for violent action”, but disagreed that there was basis for a defamation claim.

In November, a leaked internal BBC memo criticised how the speech was edited, and led to the resignations of the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and its head of news, Deborah Turness.

Before Trump filed the lawsuit, lawyers for the BBC had given a lengthy response to the president’s claims.

They said there was no malice in the edit and that Trump was not harmed by the programme, as he was re-elected shortly after it aired.

They also said the BBC did not have the rights to, and did not, distribute the Panorama programme on its US channels. While the documentary was available on BBC iPlayer, it was restricted to viewers in the UK.

In his lawsuit, Trump cites agreements the BBC had with other distributors to show content, specifically one with a third-party media corporation that allegedly had licensing rights to the documentary outside the UK. The BBC has not yet responded to these claims, nor has the company with the alleged distribution agreement.

The suit also claims that people in Florida may have accessed the programme using a VPN or by using streaming service BritBox.

“The Panorama Documentary’s publicity, coupled with significant increases in VPN usage in Florida since its debut, establishes the immense likelihood that citizens of Florida accessed the Documentary before the BBC had it removed,” the lawsuit said.