Trump seeks billions in defamation lawsuit against BBC over edited Jan. 6 speech
US President Donald Trump has filed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation
WASHINGTON, United States (AA) — US President Donald Trump has filed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), accusing the public broadcaster of defamation over the editing of his January 6, 2021 speech in a documentary aired in the United Kingdom.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation. It also includes an additional $5 billion claim under Florida’s trade practices law, bringing the total damages sought to $10 billion.
Trump’s legal team alleges that the BBC published a “false, defamatory, malicious, disparaging, and inflammatory” portrayal of the president in a documentary broadcast about a week before the 2024 US presidential election.
Earlier on Monday, Trump told reporters that he intended to sue the BBC for misrepresenting his words.
“Literally, they put words in my mouth,” Trump said. “They had me saying things that I never said.”
According to the lawsuit, Trump claims the BBC defamed him by selectively editing portions of his January 6 speech, emphasizing his call for supporters to march to the US Capitol and to “fight like hell,” while omitting remarks in which he urged demonstrators to act “peacefully and patriotically.”
The documentary, aired as part of the BBC’s Panorama program, reportedly spliced together separate lines from Trump’s speech in a way that, according to his lawyers, altered the original meaning and portrayed him as directly inciting violence.
In November, the BBC issued a public apology to Trump for the edited segment, acknowledging that the program combined two distinct excerpts from the speech. However, the broadcaster said it would not pay compensation or accept Trump’s assertion that the edit amounted to defamation.
Following the controversy, BBC Director General Tim Davie and the corporation’s head of news, Deborah Turness, resigned amid mounting criticism over editorial standards and oversight.
Trump has previously pursued defamation lawsuits against multiple media organizations. He filed cases against US networks CBS and ABC in recent years, both of which were resolved through multimillion-dollar settlements.
The BBC has not yet publicly responded to the latest lawsuit.
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