FIRST ON FOX – President Donald Trump filed a monster $10 billion lawsuit on Monday against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for its 2024 "Panorama" documentary that distorted his Jan. 6 remarks.
Trump sued the BBC for both defamation and for a violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act for $5 billion apiece, as the president is seeking $10 billion total. The suit, filed in the Southern District of Florida Federal Court, was filed in a personal capacity and names BBC and BBC studios productions as defendants.
"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. The BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda. President Trump’s powerhouse lawsuit is holding the BBC accountable for its defamation and reckless election interference just as he has held other fake news mainstream media responsible for their wrongdoing," a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told Fox News Digital.
Trump is represented by attorneys Alejandro Brito, Edward Paltzik and Daniel Epstein.
The BBC has come under intense scrutiny over the documentary about Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, speech delivered before the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Critics claim the documentary was wildly misleading because it omitted Trump's call for supporters to protest peacefully.
The lawsuit states: "The BBC, faced with overwhelming and justifiable outrage on both sides of the Atlantic, has publicly admitted its staggering breach of journalistic ethics, and apologized, but has made no showing of actual remorse for its wrongdoing nor meaningful institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuses."
The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The BBC previously issued an apology for the erroneous edit and said it had pulled the program from its platforms, but a spokesperson for the broadcaster added, "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 controversy began with a bombshell report from The Telegraph that featured excerpts from a whistleblower dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, a communications advisor hired by the BBC to review its editorial standards.
The whistleblower revealed that a BBC Panorama documentary released last year had a misleading edit of comments Trump made during a rally speech given on Jan. 6, 2021, as he protested the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The documentary omitted Trump urging his supporters to protest "peacefully" and instead spliced two separate comments made nearly an hour apart, making him appear he was calling for violence.
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"We're gonna walk down to the Capitol. And I'll be there with you. And we fight — we fight like hell," the documentary showed Trump saying.
In reality, Trump said, "We're gonna walk down to the Capitol. And we're gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong." It wasn't until 54 minutes later that Trump called on his supporters to "fight like hell" for election integrity.
The New York Times referred to the ordeal as "one of the worst crises in its 103-year history" of the BBC. The blunder led to the resignations of BBC News CEO Deborah Turness and BBC director-general Tim Davie.
The 46-page court filing states that the documentary "has gained substantial traction and republication across various media in the United States and elsewhere globally" and the BBC "used their false and defamatory publications to maliciously disparage and damage President Trump and impugn his reputation."
Trump’s legal team suggested the defendants "timed the publication of the Panorama Documentary to be close in time to the 2024 Presidential Election" and the value of the president’s "personal brand alone is reasonably estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars."
"Business ventures bearing his name generate hundreds of millions of dollars of annual revenue. Moreover, 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, continue into the present, thereby causing massive economic damage to his brand value and significant damage and injury to his future financial prospects, in addition to continuing to harm his reputation as President of the United States of America," the suit states.
Trump is seeking a jury trial.
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Trump's lawsuit against the BBC is the latest in a string of legal battles he has had with news organizations.
In December 2024, ABC News made a $16 million settlement with Trump and issued an apology after anchor George Stephanopoulos falsely claimed that Trump was found "liable for rape" in the president's civil court case against columnist E. Jean Carroll, when in fact, a New York jury found him liable for sexual abuse.
In July, Paramount made a multimillion-dollar settlement with Trump after he accused CBS News of "election interference" over its handling of a "60 Minutes" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the lead-up to the 2024 election. While CBS News offered no apology or admitted to any wrongdoing, it did implement editorial reforms requiring the raw transcript of all presidential candidates to be released.
Trump also reached settlements with Meta, X and YouTube (owned by Google) and has pending lawsuits against The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Des Moines Register and veteran pollster Ann Selzer.
