Trump Sues BBC Over Edited Jan. 6 Documentary, Seeking $10B in Damages
President Donald Trump has followed through on his threat to sue the BBC over the U.K. broadcaster’s documentary that edited his comments during the rally leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The lawsuit was filed Monday by Trump’s lawyers in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in Miami, alleging defamation and violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. Trump’s lawsuit demands no less than $5 billion in damages for each of the two counts, amounting to more than $10 billion total.
“This action concerns a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump, which was published in a BBC Panorama documentary, that was fabricated and aired by the Defendants one week before the 2024 Presidential Election in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment,” the complaint reads. (A copy is available at this link.)
The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The BBC chair Samir Shah last month told staff in an email that the broadcaster is “determined to fight” a potential lawsuit from Trump. “There is a lot being written, said and speculated upon about the possibility of legal action, including potential costs or settlements,” Shah said in the email, as reported by Sky News. Shah wrote that, “I want to be very clear with you — our position has not changed. There is no basis for a defamation case and we are determined to fight this.”
The episode of BBC’s “Panorama” documentary program in question, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?”, aired in Oct. 24, 2024 — but only erupted into a firestorm after a leaked memo published in early November 2025 by The Telegraph accused the broadcaster of editing a Trump speech to make it sound like he encouraged the Jan. 6 riots. A BBC review found that “Panorama” edited Trump’s Jan. 6 speech to be: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore” — and that the part beginning with “and we fight” came 54 minutes after “we’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you.”
The resulting scandal led to the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davie and CEO of news Deborah Turness.
A previous letter from Trump’s lawyers to the BBC demanded a full retraction of the documentary, an apology and payment to “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused.” Last month, the BBC issued an apology to Trump but refused to offer compensation. The BBC said it has no plans to rebroadcast the “Trump: A Second Chance?” documentary on any BBC platforms. “While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim,” the BBC said in a Nov. 13 statement.
