Donald Trump files $10bn lawsuit against the BBC

Stefania Palma in Washington and Daniel Thomas in London

Donald Trump is suing the BBC for $10bn over a misleading edit of a speech by the US president in a documentary, which he alleges was “fabricated” and defamatory.

The lawsuit, filed on Monday, accuses the UK public broadcaster of publishing “a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory and malicious depiction of President Trump” in a Panorama documentary that aired ahead of the 2024 US presidential election.

The BBC apologised to Trump last month over the documentary, which suggested he had encouraged his supporters to storm the Capitol building on January 6 2021 as lawmakers ratified his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 US election.

Trump brought the lawsuit in his personal capacity in a federal court in Florida, suing the BBC for one count of defamation and one count of violating Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. The president is seeking at least $5bn in damages for each count.

The court documents said that the documentary had caused “massive economic damage to his brand value and significant damage and injury to his future financial prospects”.

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

Last month, the broadcaster said that while it “sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim”.

The lawsuit raises the stakes in the UK broadcaster’s clash with Trump, which has led to the resignations of BBC director-general Tim Davie and the head of BBC News Deborah Turness.

It also marks the latest complaint filed by the president against a media outlet. He has targeted US groups including CBS over its editing of an interview with Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival in the 2024 election race.

Trump also sued ABC for defamation over on-air comments made by George Stephanopoulos, one of its star anchors. CBS owner Paramount and ABC have agreed to pay $16mn and $15mn respectively to settle the president’s lawsuits.

The BBC lawsuit centres on the documentary splicing together parts of Trump’s speech in which he told supporters on January 6 2021 to “walk down to the Capitol” and then to “fight like hell”.

Trump had originally said “we’re going to walk down to the Capitol and cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women”.

The president, in Monday’s filing, alleged that the BBC had “intentionally omitted” a part of the speech in which he said: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Legal experts have said that the case’s success is likely to initially hinge on whether Trump’s lawyers could prove jurisdiction to pursue the case in a Florida court.

The lawsuit can be filed in Florida because the BBC dispatched staff there to gather original footage for the documentary, Trump claims, making the BBC “subject to personal jurisdiction”.

Trump’s lawsuit also states that the show was available in Florida to subscribers of BritBox, the BBC-owned subscription streaming service. It argues that viewers may have used VPNs to circumvent “geoblocking” restrictions on the broadcast, and claims that it was distributed through a third-party distributor called Blue Ant Media Corporation.

Blue Ant Media oversees international licensing of the documentary outside the UK, which means it had the rights to sell it to international broadcasters. The company, which last month said that the show had been withdrawn from its distribution catalogue, was not immediately available for comment on Tuesday.

BBC lawyers last month set out five grounds to reject Trump’s defamation claim, according to people with knowledge of the position, including arguing that there was no jurisdiction. The BBC said that the documentary was not distributed in the US and the broadcaster’s iPlayer streaming service was “geoblocked” from viewers.

British politicians rallied around the BBC on Tuesday. Stephen Kinnock, a minister in the Labour government, said that “it’s right that the BBC stands firm” and that “they are right to stick by their guns”. He said Labour “will always stand up for the BBC as a vitally important institution”.

He told Sky News that the BBC has been “very clear that there is no case to answer in terms of Mr Trump’s accusations on the broader point about libel or defamation”.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said that the government needed to “stand up for the BBC against Trump’s outrageous legal threat and protect licence fee payers from being hit in the pocket”.

The lawsuit threatens to overshadow the UK government’s publication of a green paper later on Tuesday that will lay out options for the future of the BBC, including funding options.