President Donald Trump had repeatedly threatened to sue the BBC over documentary edits to his Jan. 6 speech.
The BBC has said it will defend itself against a $10 billion lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump on Monday, which alleges the British public broadcaster defamed him in a documentary before last year’s presidential election by deceptively editing parts of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech.
In a brief statement, the BBC said it would fight the lawsuit, raising the possibility of a legal battle over whether the edit of the speech caused harm to the president’s reputation.
“As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case. We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings,” a BBC spokesperson said, according to the Reuters news agency.
In a 33-page complaint, Trump’s attorneys asked a federal court in Miami for a jury trial and alleged a BBC documentary that aired a week before the 2024 presidential election was “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
The BBC, BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. and BBC Studios Productions Ltd. — co-producers of the “Trump: A Second Chance” documentary — are named as defendants.
Trump’s attorneys alleged that the BBC purposely spliced together parts of his speech to supporters at the Ellipse in Washington, including a section early on in the speech when he urged them to walk to the Capitol and a section nearly 55 minutes later when he told them to “fight like hell.”
The suit argued that the documentary is deceptive in its omission of Trump’s encouraging his supporters to engage in peaceful protest, when he said: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night.
Charles B. Tobin, an attorney representing the BBC, said in a letter last month to Trump’s attorneys included in Monday’s filing that “our client had no intention of misleading anyone” and that the BBC had offered public contrition, a personal apology to Trump sent by email and a retraction that appeared online.
The BBC’s chairman, Samir Shah, previously acknowledged that the documentary’s editing “gave the mistaken impression” that Trump “made a direct call for violent action” and apologized for “that error of judgement.”
Trump announced earlier Monday that the lawsuit was coming, telling reporters in the Oval Office that he was suing the BBC “for putting words in my mouth.”
“They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with Jan. 6 that I didn’t say, and the beautiful words that I said, right, the beautiful words talking about patriotism and all of the good things that I said, they didn’t say that,” he said.
The lawsuit relates to an episode of the BBC News show “Panorama,” which aired before last year’s election.
Two parts of the speech were edited together to give the impression that Trump said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
However, Trump said: “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’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.”
And much later in the same speech he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Trump was accused of encouraging the crowd, who later stormed the Capitol. The House Jan. 6 committee said after an 18-month investigation that Trump spent much of the speech at the Washington rally “amping up his crowd with lies about the election, attacking his own vice-president and Republican members of Congress, and exhorting the crowd to fight.”
Trump has repeatedly threatened to sue the BBC, saying after his election victory last year that he would seek $1 billion in damages.
Trump scored a victory this year when Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, said it would pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit with Trump over his allegations that a “60 Minutes” interview last year with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was deceptively edited.
ABC last year agreed to pay $15 million as part of a legal settlement with Trump over defamation allegations against anchor George Stephanopoulos during an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C.
BBC says it will defend Trump defamation lawsuit over Panorama speech edit
The BBC has said it will defend a $5bn (£3.7bn) lawsuit filed by US President Donald Trump against the BBC over an edit of his 6 January 2021 speech in a Panorama documentary.
Trump accused the broadcaster of defamation and of violating a trade practices law, according to court documents filed in Florida.
The BBC apologised to Trump last month, but rejected his demands for compensation and disagreed there was a “basis for a defamation claim”.
Trump’s legal team accused the BBC of defaming him by “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech”.
A BBC spokesperson said: “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case.”
“We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”
Trump said last month he planned to sue the BBCfor the documentary, which aired in the UK ahead of the 2024 US election.
“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters then of his plans. “They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”
In his speech on 6 January 2021, before a riot at the US Capitol, Trump told a crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
More than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell.”
In the Panorama programme, a clip showed him as saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The BBC acknowledged the edit had given “the mistaken impression” he had “made a direct call for violent action”, but disagreed that there was basis for a defamation claim.
In November, a leaked internal BBC memo criticised how the speech was edited, and led to the resignations of the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and its head of news, Deborah Turness.
Before Trump filed the lawsuit, lawyers for the BBC had given a lengthy response to the president’s claims.
They said there was no malice in the edit and that Trump was not harmed by the programme, as he was re-elected shortly after it aired.
They also said the BBC did not have the rights to, and did not, distribute the Panorama programme on its US channels. While the documentary was available on BBC iPlayer, it was restricted to viewers in the UK.
In his lawsuit, Trump cites agreements the BBC had with other distributors to show content, specifically one with a third-party media corporation that allegedly had licensing rights to the documentary outside the UK. The BBC has not yet responded to these claims, nor has the company with the alleged distribution agreement.
The lawsuit also claims people in Florida may have accessed the programme using a VPN or by using streaming service BritBox.
“The Panorama Documentary’s publicity, coupled with significant increases in VPN usage in Florida since its debut, establishes the immense likelihood that citizens of Florida accessed the Documentary before the BBC had it removed,” the lawsuit said.
Health minister Stephen Kinnock said the BBC was right to “stand firm” in the face of Trump’s lawsuit.
“I think they have apologised for one or two of the mistakes that were made in that Panorama programme, but they’ve also been very clear that there is no case to answer in terms of Mr Trump’s accusations on the broader point about libel or defamation,” he told Sky News.
He said the Labour Party would “always stand up for the BBC as a vitally important institution”.
Nigel Huddleston, shadow culture secretary, said the prime minister should “use his apparent influence to explain to the president that suing the BBC will negatively impact the licence fee payer”.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey urged Sir Keir Starmer to tell Trump his decision to sue the BBC was “unacceptable”.
This is the latest in a series of lawsuits Trump has filed against news organisations.
He has previously sued several US media companies for large sums of money, securing multi-million dollar settlements in some cases.
Chris Ruddy, founder and chief executive of conservative US media outlet Newsmax Media, and an ally of Trump, told the BBC it was difficult to win a defamation lawsuit in the US as “the bar is very high”.
But he suggested the BBC should reach a settlement to avoid the cost of litigation, which he estimated could reach between $50m (£37m) and $100m (£74m).
Former BBC Radio controller Mark Damazer said it would be “extremely damaging to the BBC’s reputation not to fight the case”.
“This is about the BBC’s independence and, unlike American media organisations which have coughed up the money, the BBC doesn’t have commercial business interests that depend on President Trump’s beneficence in the White House,” he told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme.
Trump seeks up to $10 billion in damages from BBC over editing of January 6 speech
RIGHT THAT BBC ‘STANDS FIRM’, MINISTER SAYS
The BBC said it would defend the case and would not make any further comment.
It had previously apologised to Trump, admitted an error of judgment and acknowledged that the edit gave the mistaken impression that he had made a direct call for violent action. But it has said there is no legal basis to sue.
British minister Stephen Kinnock said the BBC had apologised and said there were no grounds for legal action.
CRISIS LED TO RESIGNATIONS
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