Trump sues BBC for $7.5 billion, claims defamation from Panorama documentary

President Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the BBC in Miami federal court on Monday night, seeking at least $5 billion (A$7.5b) in damages.

The civil complaint accuses the British Broadcasting Corporation of producing a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump” in a Panorama documentary aired one week before the 2024 election.

Trump’s suit alleges the documentary was produced as part of “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”

The suit notes that the documentary, titled “Trump: A Second Chance,” was edited to make it appear that during his January 6, 2021, speech outside the White House, Trump had explicitly urged his supporters to attack the US Capitol.

“The Panorama Documentary falsely depicted President Trump telling supporters: ‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,’ ” the suit says. “President Trump never uttered this sequence of words.”

In fact, the suit says, the sentence containing the words “And we fight” was uttered by Trump nearly 55 minutes after he said the words “I’ll be there with you.”

BBC Chair Samir Shah recently apologized for an “error of judgment” over the edit, and the broadcaster’s director general and head of news both resigned.

The BBC apologised to Trump on November 13, and promised not to air the documentary again or show it on any of its platforms.

“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 on November 13.

Trump earlier Monday told reporters at the White House that the lawsuit would soon be filed.

“In a little while, you’ll be seeing I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth,” Trump said. “Literally, they put words in my mouth. They had me saying things that I never said coming out.”

The suit alleges that “concerns about the Panorama Documentary were raised internally before its dissemination, but the BBC ignored those concerns and did not take corrective action.”

The complaint also said the documentary “is part of the BBC’s longstanding pattern of manipulating President Trump’s speeches and presenting content in a misleading manner in order to defame him, including fabricating calls for violence that he never made.”

The suit is the latest in a series of defamation complaints that the notoriously litigious president has filed against media outlets.

Trump filed a $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times in September, accusing the newspaper of being a “mouthpiece” for the Democratic Party.

In July, Trump filed a lawsuit seeking $10 billion in damages from media baron Rupert Murdoch and the publisher of The Wall Street Journal over that newspaper’s report that Trump sent his then-friend Jeffrey Epstein a “bawdy” letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday.

Trump denies sending or authoring that letter, which was among the documents that the notorious sex offender Epstein’s estate has since turned over to a congressional committee.