US President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking $10 billion from the BBC, accusing the British broadcaster of defamation and deceptive and unfair business practices.
The 33-page lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting “false, defamatory, manipulative, insulting, sadistic, and malicious material against President Trump,” calling it a “shameless attempt to interfere and influence” the 2024 US presidential election.
It accused the BBC of “combining two separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021” to “deliberately distort the meaning of what President Trump said.”
The suit, filed in a Florida court, seeks $5 billion in defamation and $5 billion in unfair trade practices.
The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
The broadcaster apologized last month to Trump for the editing of the January 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejected allegations that he had intimidated him, after Trump threatened legal action.
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BBC chairman Samir Shah called it an “error of judgement,” prompting the BBC’s chief executive to resign along with its head of news.
The speech came before some of Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol as Congress prepared to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory that Trump falsely claimed was stolen from him.
The BBC broadcast an hour-long documentary – entitled Trump: A Second Chance? – days before the 2024 US presidential election. It combined three excerpts from two parts of the 2021 speech, presented about an hour apart, in what appeared to be a single quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts that were cut was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
Trump said earlier on Monday that he had sued the BBC for “putting words in my mouth.”
“Actually, they put terrible words in my mouth related to Jan. 6 that I didn’t say, and they are good words, which I said, right?” said the president unprompted when he appeared in the Oval Office. “They are good words, they talk about patriotism and all the good things I said.
The president’s case was filed in Florida. The deadline to bring the case to the British courts expired more than a year ago.
Legal experts brought possible challenges to the US case given that the documentary was not shown in the country.
The lawsuit alleges that people in the US can watch original BBC content, including the “Panorama” series, which includes a documentary, through subscription streaming platform BritBox or a private virtual network service.
The 103-year-old BBC is a national broadcaster funded by an annual license fee of £174.50 ($230) paid by every household watching live TV or BBC content. Bound by its constitutional principles of nonpartisanship, it often faces intense scrutiny and criticism from both conservatives and liberals.
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