Authored by Troy Myers & Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
President Donald Trump on Monday evening filed a lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) seeking $10 billion in restitution for alleged defamation in a news special that aired last year.
The 33-page legal filing accuses the BBC of making “a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump … that 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 aired an episode titled “Donald Trump: A Second Chance?” on Oct. 28, 2024—one week before the presidential election.
The suit claims that in its episode, produced by “Panorama,“ the BBC ”intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers“ by ”splicing together” clips of remarks that Trump made ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol breach.
It asks for $10 billion in damages, citing the value of Trump’s personal brand and “the injury to President Trump’s business and personal reputation inflicted by these Defendants, and their efforts to falsely, maliciously, and defamatorily portray President Trump as a violent insurrectionist.”
The legal action was expected, coming hours after Trump announced from the White House on Dec. 15 that he planned to imminently file a lawsuit over the alleged defamatory edits.
“Literally, they put words in my mouth. They had me saying things that I never said coming out. I guess they used AI or something,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Monday.
The edits at issue center around remarks Trump made to his supporters at the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
In the BBC program, editors spliced together two clips from the speech, creating the impression that Trump had said, “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
In reality, the clips came from separate portions of the speech, including one in which Trump said, “We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be with you … we’re gonna walk down to the Capitol,” and another 54 minutes later, in which he said, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
The UK broadcaster said it personally apologized to Trump in a letter to the White House last month, but has said that the issue doesn’t rise to the level of legal action.
“While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim,” the broadcaster said in a statement in November.
The BBC also admitted to the misleading edit in its Corrections and Clarifications section. The broadcaster said the episode in question would not be rebroadcast on any BBC platforms.
“We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action,” the BBC wrote on Nov. 13.
The next day, the president made his original threat to sue the BBC for up to $5 billion, saying the apology was not enough.
The BBC’s director-general and CEO of news at the time resigned after the scandal broke, an act that Trump praised on Truth Social a month ago, posting they “are all quitting/FIRED, because they were caught ‘doctoring’ my very good (PERFECT!) speech of January 6th.”
Trump said he planned to raise the issue with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who he said was “very embarrassed” about the scandal.
“This is within one of our great allies, you know, this is supposedly our great ally,” Trump said during a Fox News interview last month.
Loading recommendations…
