Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the BBC totalling up to $10bn (£7.5bn) over the editing of one of his speeches from 6 January 2021.
The speech, which was broadcast in an episode of BBC’s Panorama series, saw parts of Trump’s speech at the US Capitol spliced together.
Trump accused the broadcaster of defamation and of violating Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, according to court documents filed in Florida.
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The US president is claiming $5bn (£3.75bn) for defamation and another $5bn for the violation of trade practices, totalling $10bn (£7.5bn).
Trump’s legal team released a statement to the New York Times saying that it intends to hold the BBC accountable for what it perceives as wrongdoing.
The statement read: “The formerly respected and now disgraced BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.”
Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday evening, Trump said the BBC “put words in my mouth.”
He continued: “They had me saying things I never said, I guess they used AI or something.”
The contentious piece of editing which is under scrutiny came in the documentary when Trump addressed a crowd at the US Capitol, before the riots broke out.
The words which Panorama broadcast were: “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 full, unedited footage shows that Trump actually said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
And then, more than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell.”
However, these two sentences had been spliced together during editing, with the BBC acknowledging that the fusion had given “the mistaken impression” Trump had “made a direct call for violent action”.
The controversy caused the resignations of both BBC director general Tim Davie and head of BBC News Deborah Turness.