What are the hurdles for his legal argument?

President Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for up to $1bn (£759m) in damages, claiming the BBC used “false, defamatory, derogatory and inflammatory statements” about him in a documentary.

Trump’s legal team demanded three things in a letter to the BBC: a “full and fair retraction” of the documentary, an apology, and the BBC’s “appropriate compensation for the damage caused to President Trump.”

A leaked memo, written by a former independent outside counsel to the broadcaster’s broadcast standards committee, suggested that the Panorama program co-edited portions of the Trump speech so that it appeared Trump was openly encouraging the January 2021 Capitol Hill riot.

The one-hour program was broadcast just before the 2024 presidential election in the UK.

So how strong is Trump’s case?

BBC chief Samir Shah said he wanted to apologize for the documentary, saying the news organization had made an “error of judgement” because it gave the impression that the edits were Trump’s “direct call to action”.

Tim Davie, the BBC’s outgoing director general who resigned following criticism, said: “I think we made a mistake and there was an editorial breach.”

But U.S. media and libel law experts say the president faces serious obstacles to winning such large damages from a lawsuit against the BBC, in part because of strong U.S. press freedom laws.

The controversy began last week when the Telegraph published the leaked memo criticizing the documentary and the way it edited Trump’s speech.

Trump actually said: “We will march to the Capitol and support our brave senators, congressmen, and women.”

However, in the Panorama montage he is seen saying: “We’ll march to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

His speech about the ellipse was delivered as Congress prepared to certify the 2020 election results with Joe Biden as the winner. Minutes after he completed his speech, a large mob of his supporters breached the US Capitol.

Days later, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach the president for “incitement of insurrection,” and the Senate later acquitted him. Trump said his speech was “excellent.”

The White House responded to the Telegraph report, with its press secretary calling the BBC “completely 100% fake news”.

After Davie and the CEO of the BBC’s news division resigned, threats of legal action followed. In his letter to the BBC, Trump’s lawyer said the company was “deliberately attempting to completely mislead its audience” by combining three separate clips of the speech in the documentary.

He added that the BBC had inflicted “huge financial and reputational damage” on the president.

Trump later said in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News that he had an “obligation” to sue and called the documentary edits “deeply dishonest.”

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides significant protections for freedom of speech and the press.

The landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision New York Times v. Sullivan established that public figures suing for libel must prove “actual malice”; this meant that “the statement was made with knowledge of the falsity or without regard for whether it was true or false.”

Trump will need to prove three main components: that the posted content is factually false to be defamatory; suffered losses due to false and slanderous news; He said the media outlet knew it was a lie and acted with “genuine malice.”

“I think all of this creates some difficulties for the claimant,” George Freeman, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center in New York, told BBC Radio 4.

But not everyone agreed.

Burt Neuborne, professor emeritus at New York University School of Law, said Trump filed the lawsuit against the BBC because the edits to Trump’s words were misleading. He said the mistake did not amount to “innocent merging.”

“The real evil here is the intentional dissemination of something that purports to be verbatim but is not,” said Mr. Neuborne, the former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. He added that a jury is less likely to award Trump significant damages for such a mistake.

Trump has signaled his intention to file the final lawsuit in the US state of Florida rather than the UK.

In the UK, the statute of limitations for defamation – or time to bring a lawsuit – is one year, which has already expired for Trump as the documentary is released in October 2024. In Florida, there is a two-year limit.

While Florida law gives him more time, filing a defamation lawsuit in the United States would mean Trump faces a tougher legal standard.

If Trump were to sue in Florida, he would also have to prove that the BBC Panorama documentary was available there. So far there is no evidence of it being shown in the US.

Mr Neuborne said the BBC’s best chance of dismissing any future legal action would be to argue that the state did not have proper jurisdiction because “a sufficient amount of information has not been disclosed in Florida”.

Trump’s letter to the BBC concludes that if the BBC does not comply with his demands by November 14, “President Trump will have no choice but to exercise his legal and equitable rights, all of which are expressly reserved and not waived, including suing for damages of not less than $1,000,000,000 (One Billion Dollars).”

But to be awarded a billion dollars in damages in a Florida defamation lawsuit, a plaintiff like the president must prove that he actually suffered that much harm, said Lyrissa Lidskey, a professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

“Given that he won the presidency after that and continued to make money from his business, it seems implausible that he would prove a billion dollars in losses,” he said.

Trump sued several US news organizations for large sums of money, and in some cases obtained large settlements.

In 2025, Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, agreed to pay Trump $16 million after suing him over a 60 Minutes interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Trump claimed the video was edited to better portray Harris, with whom he was running at the time.

ABC News also paid Trump $15 million after one of its anchors, George Stephanopoulos, falsely claimed in an interview that Trump was found guilty of rape. The president was found liable for sexual harassment and defamation of author E Jean Carroll in 2023.

He filed a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times over critical comments made against him by journalists during the 2024 presidential campaign. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in September on the grounds that it was filed on an “improper and impermissible” form, but allowed Trump to file a shorter complaint.

Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said Trump’s numerous lawsuits against media organizations cost him little but could be expensive for news organizations.

“He doesn’t care whether he wins or not. What matters is intimidating and punishing people he deems critical to him,” Mr. Stern said.