US President Donald Trump on Monday filed a lawsuit seeking at least $10 billion in damages from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) over a documentary that allegedly edited his January 6, 2021 speech to supporters ahead of the US Capitol riot.
The lawsuit, filed at a federal court in Miami, seeks damages of not less than $5 billion on each of two counts, defamation and violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act bringing the total claim to at least $10 billion.
Trump, 79, had earlier said the lawsuit was imminent, accusing the BBC of misrepresenting his words and alleging that the broadcaster “put words in my mouth,” even suggesting that “they used AI or something.”
The documentary in question aired last year, ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, on the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Panorama.
According to the lawsuit, the programme spliced together two separate portions of Trump’s January 6 speech in a manner that made it appear he explicitly urged supporters to attack the Capitol, where lawmakers were certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
“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 said in a statement to AFP.
“The BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in its coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda,” the statement added.
The BBC, whose global audience extends well beyond the United Kingdom, came under intense scrutiny last month after media reports renewed attention on the edited clip. The controversy reportedly led to the resignation of the broadcaster’s director-general and its top news executive.
Trump’s lawsuit alleges that the edited speech was “fabricated and aired by the defendants one week before the 2024 Presidential Election in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
The BBC has denied the allegations of legal defamation. However, BBC Chairman Samir Shah sent Trump a letter of apology and told a UK parliamentary committee last month that the broadcaster should have acted sooner to acknowledge the error after it was identified in an internal memo later leaked to The Daily Telegraph.
The case marks the latest in a series of legal actions Trump has taken against media organisations in recent years, several of which have resulted in multi-million-dollar settlements.
AFP
