Donald Trump has filed his $10BILLION lawsuit towards the BBC over doctored Panorama speech
Donald Trump has filed a $10billion lawsuit against the BBC after the embattled corporation was found to have doctored his speech in a Panorama episode.
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of Florida, includes one count of defamation and one count of violating a Florida trade practices law.
Trump’s legal team are demanding $5billion in damages for each count.
In a 33-page complaint doucment, attorneys for the president accused the BBC of publishing a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of him in the Panorama episode Trump: A Second Chance?
The documentary, which was aired just a week before the US election, spliced together two parts of a speech in a way which appeared to show him inciting his followers to storm the Capitol building in Washington DC.
The BBC ‘intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers’ by ‘splicing together’ the two clips, the lawsuit claims.
Earlier on Monday the US president said he would file a libel lawsuit ‘probably this afternoon or tomorrow evening’ after the corporation doctored one of his speeches.
He said: ‘I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth… I guess they used AI or something.’
It comes a month after the US President blasted the broadcaster for the editing of a speech he made on January 6, 2021, the day his supporters overran the Capitol.
Donald Trumphas filed a $10billion lawsuit against the BBC after the corporation was found to have doctored his speech in a Panorama episode
He vowed to sue unless he got a full retraction, a grovelling apology, and an offer of compensation for misleading Panorama viewers with an edit of his speech.
The BBC sent a personal apology to Trump in November but said there was no legal basis for him to sue the public broadcaster over a documentary his lawyers called defamatory. They then refused to pay financial compensation.
The corporation said the splicing of the speech was an ‘error of judgment’ but rejected his compensation demands.
In a letter to BBC staff last month, seen by the Daily Mail at the time, chairman Samir Shah acknowledged what ‘I fully understand has been a difficult week’, adding: ‘I’m aware there is sadness, anger and frustration in relation to what has happened in recent days and it is hard when the BBC is the focus of so much attention and news headlines.’
He said he had written to President Trump ‘personally to extend my apology’ but that ‘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’. Mr Shah thanked staff for their resilience in what ‘I fully appreciate have been challenging circumstances’.
The BBC had admitted ‘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.’
After the BBC refused the total capitulation demanded by the US President, Trump told GB News that he had an ‘obligation’ to take legal action in a fiery interview.
‘I’m not looking to get into lawsuits, but I think I have an obligation to do it. This was so egregious’, he told GB News’ Bev Turner last month.
‘If you don’t do it, you don’t stop it from happening again with other people. ‘
Trump also confirmed to journalists outside the White House on November 14 that he planned to formally seek damages, saying: ‘We’ll sue them from anywhere between £760million and £3.8billion, probably sometime next week.
Trump said he did not want to sue the BBC but he believed he had an ‘obligation’ to do so
‘I think I have to do it,’ he added.
The BBC confirmed the Panorama programme will ‘not be broadcast again in this form or on any BBC platforms’.
BBC Newsnight was also accused of doctoring footage of the US President’s speech and ignoring concerns raised about it.
In the Newsnight edit, Trump is presented saying: ‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol.
‘And we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we fight. We fight like hell.
‘And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.’
A voiceover from presenter Kirsty Wark followed, saying ‘and fight they did’ over a clip of the Capitol riot.
Trump previously let rip over the October 2024 Panorama programme that spliced sections of his speech to suggest he directly stoked the 2021 insurrection.
The broadcaster’s documentary said: ‘We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you and we fight.’
Whereas he actually said: ‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.’
Director General Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, both resigned on November 9 following the row.
The following week, Trump remarked: ‘I guess I have to [sue]. Why not? They defrauded the public, and they’ve admitted it. This is within one of our great allies, supposedly our great ally. That’s a pretty sad event. They actually changed my January 6 speech, which was a beautiful speech, which was a very calming speech, and they made it sound radical.’
He also told Fox News on November 11: ‘I think I have an obligation to [sue] because you can’t allow people to do that.’
Former BBC Director General Tim Davie resigned following the row over the doctored speech
Trump said he would be ‘left with no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights… including by filing legal action for no less than 1,000,000,000 dollars [£760million] in damages,’ if the BBC failed to act.
Trump told GB News he has had ‘a lot of success’ litigating against news organisations.
‘Because it’s fake news,’ he said. ‘But I’ve never had anything so fake as the BBC.’
When asked about Trump’s legal threats last month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the corporation is a ‘Leftist propaganda machine’.
As licence fee payers faced the prospect of a costly legal battle, the BBC’s legal team sent Trump a letter setting out five reasons why it does not think it has a case to answer.
It said the documentary was restricted to viewers in the UK, did not cause Trump any harm – as he was re-elected shortly after – and ‘was not designed to mislead, but just to shorten a long speech’.
Fourthly, it said the clip was 12 seconds within an hour-long programme, which also contained voices in support of Trump, and finally, an opinion on a matter of public concern and political speech is heavily protected under defamation laws in the US.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the corporation’s editorial standards and guidelines were ‘in some cases not robust enough and in other cases not consistently applied’.
