Former U.S. President Donald Trump filed a staggering $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC on Monday, accusing the British broadcaster of defaming him through a misleading edit of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech at the White House Ellipse.
The lawsuit targets a 2024 BBC documentary titled “Trump: A Second Chance”, which Trump claims spliced segments of his remarks before the Capitol riot to make it appear that he explicitly encouraged the violence.
“I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth, literally,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with January 6th that I didn’t say.”
Filed in a federal court in Miami, the 33-page suit seeks $5 billion for defamation and an additional $5 billion for alleged violations of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. Trump’s legal team described the documentary as “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 presidential election.
Last month, the BBC issued a formal apology, though it maintained that it did not defame Trump. The broadcaster’s director-general and news CEO both resigned, with BBC chairman Samir Shah describing the edit as an “error of judgment.”
The contentious documentary included an edited clip of Trump saying: “We’re gonna 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 gonna have a country anymore.”
According to the lawsuit, this clip was a composite of three different segments of Trump’s speech, edited to appear as a single sentence while omitting nearly an hour of content, including his repeated calls to fight “peacefully.” The documentary also reportedly showed footage of the Proud Boys en route to the Capitol, implying they were inspired to march after Trump’s address.
Trump’s legal team is requesting a jury trial to resolve the case.
