Washington — President Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the BBC on Monday over a documentary that spliced parts of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech on the Ellipse.
The suit, filed in the Southern District of Florida, includes one count of defamation and one count of violating a Florida trade practices law. Mr. Trump's legal team asked for $5 billion in damages for each count, for a total of $10 billion.
In a 33-page complaint, attorneys for Mr. Trump accused the BBC of publishing a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction" of him in a BBC "Panorama" documentary that aired in the U.K. a week before the 2024 election. One portion of the documentary focused on Mr. Trump's words and actions leading up to the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
The lawsuit claims that the BBC "intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers" by "splicing together" two clips of the same speech that Mr. Trump gave to supporters in Washington, D.C., before the riots began.
Mr. Trump's legal team claims that the two clips were 55 minutes apart, and the BBC's edit omitted "his statement calling for peace" in his speech. The president had directed his supporters to go to Capitol Hill, where lawmakers were soon to vote to confirm election results in favor of former President Joe Biden.
The lawsuit also alleges that "concerns" about the documentary were raised internally at the network ahead of air "but the BBC ignored those concerns and did not take corrective action," citing a report by the Telegraph newspaper.
In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Trump's legal team said in part that the BBC has a "long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda."
CBS News has reached out to the BBC and its legal team for comment.
This is a developing story; it will be updated.
