Donald Trump files $10bn lawsuit in Florida against the BBC over Panorama doc edit

The BBC doc apparently joins together two parts of Trump’s address on January 6, 2021

US president Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the BBC seeking up to US$10bn in damages over a “false, deceptive and defamatory” edit in the UK pubcaster’s Panorama documentary Trump: A Second Chance?.

The previously threatened lawsuit, filed on Monday in the US District Court Southern District of Florida, called the edit a “brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment,” and claimed the BBC “intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers around the world.”

Trump is seeking damages of up to US$5bn for defamation, and the same amount for a “violation of Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.”

Released on October 28, 2024, just ahead of the US presidential election, the doc allegedly splices together two parts of Trump’s address on January 6, 2021 – spoken some 54 minutes apart – in a way that makes it appear he directly incited the attack on the Capitol Building in Washington, DC after losing the 2020 presidential election.

According to the lawsuit, the edited version shows Trump saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Trump actually said the following, per the lawsuit: “Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down. Anyone you want but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressman and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.” Almost 55 minutes later he said: “But I said, ‘Something’s wrong here, something’s really wrong, can’t have happened.’ And we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

The potentially problematic nature of the edit first came to light in a leaked memo penned by Michael Prescott, a former advisor to the BBC’s editorial standards committee. The debacle ultimately led to the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davie and chief executive of news Deborah Turness in early November.

BBC chair Samir Shah’s subsequently acknowledged the edit amounted to an “error of judgement” and apologised to Trump, saying it “did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”

The lawsuit called the edit “false, deceptive and defamatory” and “part of the BBC’s longstanding pattern of manipulating President Trump’s speeches and presenting content in a misleading manner in order to defame him, including fabricating calls for violence that he never made.”

While they are not defendants in the case, the documentary’s producer, October Films, and international distributor, Blue Ant Media, are mentioned in the lawsuit. Also referenced is C21’s report of October 2024 that Blue Ant was shopping the doc at Mipcom.

The legal filing describes Blue Ant’s decision to drop the documentary from its catalogue as “an action displaying awareness of wrongdoing.”

It also said Blue Ant “aggressively advertised its exclusive distribution of the Panorama documentary outside of the United Kingdom,” which it claimed as “further evidencing the intent of the BBC and its strategic partners to disseminate the documentary as widely and into as many streams of commerce and channels of distribution as possible, including Florida.”

Last month, Blue Ant said it “acted solely as the international distributor and was not involved in the production or editorial process of this documentary.” It added: “Once we were made aware of concerns surrounding the content, the title was promptly withdrawn from our distribution catalogue.”

With Trump following through on his promise to sue, the BBC now finds itself in a complex situation. Going to trial would mean turning over extensive documentation and communications around how editorial decisions were made, and could reveal other confidential internal information beyond the scope of the Trump situation. Meanwhile, reaching an out-of-court settlement could be viewed by the UK taxpayer as a potentially unforgivable capitulation to the Trump administration.

The BBC previously said that it did not feel Trump has grounds for a legal case. “We strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim,” it said last month.

Legal commentators have suggested Trump would have a tricky time suing the BBC in Florida as it would need to show that the people of Florida watched the doc (which was not broadcast in the US) and felt they had been deceived. Trump would need to prove he suffered real harm and that the BBC acted with actual malice.

C21 has approached the BBC for comment.