Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the BBC over its editing of a speech he made to supporters in Washington before they stormed the US Capitol in 2021, requesting at least $5bn in damages.
Trump had teased the lawsuit earlier on Monday, telling reporters at the Oval Office: “In a little while, you’ll be seeing I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth. Literally, they put words in my mouth. They had me saying things that I never said coming out.”
Trump’s lawsuit centers on an edition of broadcaster’s flagship Panorama news show that was broadcast a week before the 2024 US election.
The episode spliced together clips of Trump’s speech, suggesting that he told the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”
However, the words were taken from sections of his speech that occurred almost an hour apart.
The BBC acknowledged the editing was an “error of judgment” and apologized to Trump, but said there was no legal basis for his claim. Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, and Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, resigned over the affair.
Trump has denied responsibility for the incident, which was aimed at blocking Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win over Trump in the 2020 US presidential election.
More details soon …
