President Donald Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit Monday against the BBC, accusing the UK state-backed broadcaster of maliciously editing his January 6, 2021 speech to portray him as inciting violence during the Capitol protest. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Miami, alleges both defamation and violations of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
According to the filing, the BBC took two completely separate parts of Trump’s Washington speech—clips made nearly an hour apart—and spliced them together to make it appear as though Trump had issued a direct call for violence. The edit, Trump’s team says, deliberately left out his explicit call for supporters to act “peacefully and patriotically.”
“This instance of doctoring—in the form of distortion of meaning and splicing of entirely unrelated word sequences—is part of the BBC’s longstanding pattern of manipulating President Trump’s speeches,” the lawsuit states. “They fabricated calls for violence that he never made.”
The documentary in question was pulled from BBC platforms after backlash from both American and British viewers. Last month, two senior BBC executives resigned following the leak of an internal memo written by former editorial adviser Michael Prescott, who confirmed the documentary’s presentation of Trump was dishonest. The memo sparked outrage on both sides of the Atlantic.
The BBC eventually issued a formal apology, admitting that the edited speech “unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech” and acknowledging it gave viewers “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.” The broadcaster said the documentary would not be re-aired in any form.
Trump’s legal team argues that the BBC’s conduct went beyond typical media bias, crossing into willful deception and coordinated defamation. The suit also notes that the BBC’s manipulation was timed to influence global perceptions of Trump and to damage his public standing during a key political period.
By filing under both defamation and deceptive trade laws in Florida, Trump is expanding the legal battlefield, signaling that foreign state media outlets will be held to account if they meddle in American affairs or mislead the public about a sitting president.
This case marks yet another escalation in Trump’s long battle against legacy media, but with a $10 billion demand and international implications, the stakes are higher than ever. The message is clear: if a media outlet falsely portrays a president as inciting insurrection, it may soon face massive legal consequences.
The post Trump Files $10 Billion Lawsuit Against BBC Over Edited Jan. 6 Documentary appeared first on Real News Now.
About Author
