President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit of defamation against the BBC on Monday, in Miami federal court, seeking approximately $5 billion in damages.
According to the civil complaint, it alleges the BBC for channeling a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump” in a Panorama documentary broadcast one week before the 2024 election.
Trump’s lawsuit alleges the documentary, which was produced to “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
The case reports that the documentary is titled “Trump: A Second Chance,” which was edited to make it on screen during his January 6, 2021, speech outside the White House, where Trump had urged his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol.
As the lawsuit reports, “The Panorama Documentary falsely depicted President Trump telling supporters: ‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore. President Trump never uttered this sequence of words.”
Eventually, the lawsuit stated that the sentence involved words like “And we fight” was said by Trump nearly 55 minutes after he added words such as, “I’ll be there with you.”
Recently, BBC Chair Samir Shah apologized for an “error of judgment” over the edit, and the broadcaster’s director general and head of news resigned after the suit.
Therefore, CNBC has further requested to comment from the BBC on Trump’s suit. The BBC apologized to Trump on November 13 and assured not produce or broadcast the documentary again or release it on any of the platforms.
In a Statement on November 13, the broadcaster stated that “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.”
However, earlier on Monday, Trump informed reporters at the White House that the suit would be filed soon.
Trump added that “In a little while, you’ll be seeing I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth. Literally, they put words in my mouth. They had me saying things that I never said coming out.”
The lawsuit reports that the “concerns about the Panorama Documentary were raised internally before its dissemination, but the BBC ignored those concerns and did not take corrective action.”
The complaint was also stated in the documentary that “is part of the BBC’s longstanding pattern of manipulating President Trump’s speeches and presenting content in a misleading manner in order to defame him, including fabricating calls for violence that he never made.”
Meanwhile, the lawsuit is the recent as of defamation complaints that the notoriously litigious Trump has filed against media outlets. Trump filed about $15 billion suit against The New York Times in September, alleging the newspaper was a “mouthpiece” for the Democratic Party.
Trump filed a lawsuit in July, securing $10 billion for the damages that came from media baron Rupert Murdoch and the publisher of The Wall Street Journal over that newspaper’s report that Trump sent his then-friend Jeffrey Epstein a “bawdy” letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday.
Trump refuted sending or stating that particular letter, which was among the documents that the notorious sex offender Epstein’s estate has since turned over to a congressional committee.
Trump sued CBS for $20 billion in October 2024 for what he accused was of a deceptive editing of an interview that his then-election competitor Kamala Harris gave to “60 Minutes.”
CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, has agreed to pay $16 million in July to settle the lawsuit, with the funds allocated to the future presidential library of Trump.
The payment came weeks after the Federal Communications Commission, which is headed by a Trump appointee, confirmed Paramount’s strategy for an $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.
ABC has agreed to pay $15 million in December 2024 to Trump’s library to settle a defamation case of anchor George Stephanopoulos, who has been inappropriately describing the civil jury verdict in a lawsuit against Trump by the writer E. Jean Carroll.
