Trump sues BBC for $10bn over documentary speech edit

AFP/APP

Washington: US President Donald Trump on Monday filed a lawsuit seeking at least $10 billion from the BBC over a documentary that edited his 2021 speech to supporters ahead of the US Capitol riot.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Miami, seeks damages of not less than $5 billion on each of two counts against the British broadcaster, alleging defamation and violations of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

Trump, 79, said earlier on Monday that legal action was imminent, accusing the BBC of having “put words in my mouth,” and even suggesting that “they used AI or something.”

The documentary aired last year ahead of the 2024 presidential election on the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Panorama.

According to the lawsuit, the programme spliced together two separate sections of Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech in a manner that made it appear he explicitly urged supporters to attack the US Capitol, where lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

“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 coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda,” the statement added.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, whose audience extends well beyond the United Kingdom, faced renewed turmoil last month after media reports drew attention to the edited clip.

The controversy led to the resignation of the BBC’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 defamation claims. 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 after the error was disclosed in an internal memo later leaked to The Daily Telegraph.

The case marks the latest in a series of legal actions Trump has pursued against media organisations in recent years, several of which have resulted in multi-million-dollar settlements.