US President Donald Trump has filed a multi-billion-dollar defamation lawsuit against the BBC over an edit of his 6 January 2021 speech in a Panorama documentary.
Trump accused the broadcaster of defamation and of violating a trade practices law, according to court documents filed in Florida. He asked for $5bn (£3.7bn) in damages on each of the claims.
The BBC has apologised to Trump, but rejected his demands for compensation and disagreed that there was any “basis for a defamation claim”.
Trump’s legal team accused the BBC of defaming him by “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech”. The BBC has not yet responded to the lawsuit.
Trump said last month that he planned to sue the BBCfor the documentary, which aired in the UK ahead of the 2024 US election.
“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters of his plans. “They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”
In his speech on 6 January 2021, before a riot at the US Capitol, Trump told a crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
More than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell.”
In the Panorama programme, a clip showed him as saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The BBC acknowledged that the edit had given “the mistaken impression” he had “made a direct call for violent action”, but disagreed that there was a basis for a defamation claim.
In November, a leaked internal BBC memo criticised the editing of the speech and led to the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and its head of news, Deborah Turness, to resign.
Before Trump filed the lawsuit, lawyers for the BBC had responded in length to the president’s claims.
They said there was no malice in the edit and that the programme did not harm Trump, as he was re-elected shortly after it aired.
They also said the BBC did not have the rights to, and did not, distribute the Panorama programme on its US channels. While the documentary was available on BBC iPlayer, it was restricted to viewers in the UK.
In his lawsuit, Trump cites agreements the BBC had with other distributors to show content, specifically one with a third-party media corporation that allegedly held licensing rights to the documentary outside the UK.
The BBC has not responded to these claims, nor has the corporation commented on the alleged distribution agreement.
The suit also claims that people in Florida may have accessed the programme via a VPN or the streaming service BritBox.
“The Panorama Documentary’s publicity, coupled with significant increases in VPN usage in Florida since its debut, establishes the immense likelihood that citizens of Florida accessed the Documentary before the BBC had it removed,” the lawsuit said.
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