Trigger Warning: This article contains details about violence.
President Donald Trump has once again dragged a popular media outlet into a legal battle. The 79-year-old filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC on Dec. 15, accusing the British broadcaster of defaming him by deceptively editing his January 6, 2021, speech delivered at the White House Ellipse.
The lawsuit targets a 2024 BBC Panorama documentary titled “Trump: A Second Chance“, which Trump claims manipulated footage of his remarks to suggest he explicitly encouraged the violent Capitol riot.
According to the complaint, the documentary contains several parts of edited footage that seemed like the BBC was trying to remove context to make his statements appear more condescending.
As per The New York Post, the documentary featured an edited clip of Donald Trump telling supporters, “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol… and we fight like hell,” presented as a single continuous statement.
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Trump’s lawsuit argues the clip was assembled from three separate parts of his speech, cutting out a nearly hour-long gap and excluding his call for supporters to act “peacefully.”
His legal team filed the 33-page complaint in federal court in Miami, seeking $5 billion in damages for defamation and an additional $5 billion under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
“I’m suing the BBC for literally putting words in my mouth,” Trump told reporters Monday. “They inserted language about January 6 that I never said.”
For context, on the afternoon of January 6, 2021, as Congress convened to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, a violent and heavily armed crowd of supporters breached the Capitol. Trump reportedly ignored phone calls from aides to take action and watched the violence unfold on TV for hours.
According to American Oversight, five people died in connection with the attack, including a Capitol Police officer who was injured during the attack. Lawmakers and other politicians inside were sheltered in secure locations as protesters became violent as they smashed windows, damaged office spaces and threatened members of the ruling party.
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The incident sparked widespread outrage and raised questions about safety, security and credibility. Only about 1,400 Capitol Police officers were on duty, and National Guard troops did not arrive until hours after the building was breached.
BBC reportedly issued a formal apology last month, but denied defaming the President as its chairman, Samir Shah, described the edit as an “error of judgment.”
As the 79-year-old’s legal team seeks a jury trial, BBC argues that the documentary wasn’t aired in the United States or appeared on its streaming platforms, Trump’s lawyers say people in the country could have accessed it through BritBox or virtual private networks.
Previously, he has accused CBS News’ 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. Trump got angry and walked out mid-conversation, stirring intense media coverage the next day. The network later reportedly agreed to pay $16 million to settle a $20 billion lawsuit.
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The controversy was widely covered, after which Bill Owens, the executive producer of the show, stepped down, followed by the resignation of CBS News chief executive Wendy McMahon.
In addition, he has also sued several prominent media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, ABC News and The New York Times, and reportedly secured multimillion-dollar settlements over defamation claims and misinformation about him and his party.
