BBC plans to fight Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit
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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) said early Tuesday that it plans to fight President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit.
The BBC was under intense scrutiny for its 2024 documentary “Panorama,” which covered Trump’s speech before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Critics claim the documentary is misleading because it does not include Trump’s call for his supporters to protest peacefully.
Trump sued the BBC on Monday for $5 billion each for both defamation and violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, seeking a total of $10 billion. The lawsuit, filed in the Federal Court for the Southern District of Florida, was filed in a personal capacity and names the BBC and BBC Studios Productions as defendants. Although ABC and CBS recently settled with Trump, the BBC plans to fight the case.
A BBC spokesperson told Fox News Digital: “As we have made clear previously, we will defend this case. We will not be commenting further on ongoing legal proceedings.”
TRUMP FILED A 10 BILLION DOLLAR LAWSUIT AGAINST BBC DUE TO THE EDITING OF THE DOCUMENTARY ON JANUARY 6.
President Donald Trump sued the BBC after the BBC apologized for altering footage of his speech in a documentary he made on January 6. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images; Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Trump’s legal team, which includes lawyers Alejandro Brito, Edward Paltzik and Daniel Epstein, believes the British channel serves a liberal political agenda.
“The formerly respected and now disgraced BBC slandered President Trump by deliberately, maliciously and deceptively doctoring his speech in an attempt to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election. The BBC has a long habit of deceiving its viewers in its coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own left-wing political agenda. President Trump’s strong case holds the BBC accountable for smears and reckless election interference, just as it holds other fake news mainstream media accountable for these attacks.” “It was wrongdoing,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told Fox News Digital.
The BBC had previously issued an apology for the faulty editing and said it had removed the program from its platforms, but a spokesperson for the broadcaster added: “Whilst the BBC sincerely regrets the way the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree that there is a basis for a libel claim.”
The row began with a bombshell report from The Telegraph, which included extracts from a dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, a communications consultant appointed by the BBC to review its editorial standards.
LEGAL ANALYST PREDICTS TRUMP COULD EARN ‘SIGNIFICANT’ DAMAGES IN BBC DOCUMENTARY CASE
President Donald Trump has filed lawsuits against multiple media companies. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
The whistleblower revealed that a BBC Panorama documentary released last year included a misleading edit of Trump’s comments at the rally before the January 6 Capitol riot.
The documentary does not include Trump’s call for his supporters to protest “peacefully” and instead adds two separate comments made about an hour apart, making it appear that Trump is calling for violence.
We will march towards the Capitol. And I’ll be there with you. “And we fight, we fight like hell,” Trump is seen saying in the documentary, with no indication that they are far apart.
In effect, Trump said: “We’re going to march on the Capitol. We’re going to support our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably going to support some of them not so much because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You’ve got to show strength and you’ve got to be strong.” But 54 minutes later, Trump called on his supporters to “fight like hell” for election integrity.
FORMER BBC DIRECTOR TOLD THE NETWORK THEY WOULD NOT AGREE TO PAY ANY MONEY TO TRUMP
The New York Times described the ordeal as “one of the worst crises in the BBC’s 103-year history”. The mistake led to the resignations of BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness and BBC director general Tim Davie.
The 46-page court filing states that the documentary “gained significant attention and coverage in various media outlets in the United States and elsewhere around the world” and that the BBC “used its false and defamatory coverage to maliciously disparage and harm President Trump and discredit him.”
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Trump’s legal team argued that the defendants “timed the release date of the Panorama Documentary to coincide with the 2024 Presidential Election” and that the president’s “personal brand alone is reasonably estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars.”
Trump wants a jury trial.
Fox News Digital’s Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
