On 15th December (Monday), United States President Donald Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC over edited speech clips in a Panorama documentary published before 2024 election. BBC is accused on two separate counts, including defamation, alongside violating the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
The British public broadcaster is charged with creating a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction” of Trump. The BBC is accused of giving the impression that he incited his supporters to move towards the US Capitol.
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 16, 2025
BREAKING: The BBC has just been sued for $10 BILLION by President Trump for manipulatively editing his Jan. 6th speech to make him sound like an insurrectionist
The BBC is COOKED!
They will be paying for Trump's library! FAFOpic.twitter.com/0D0OSSl8ZD
Trump asserted that the BBC had disparaged him by stringing together portions of a speech he gave on 5th January 2021, in which he urged followers to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.” However, his appeal for nonviolent protest was left out. Trump’s attorneys added that the BBC severely harmed his finances and image.
According to the complaint, the program titled “Trump: A Second Chance” aired on 24th October 2024 alleged that Trump declared, “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.”
The lawsuit highlighted, “President Trump never uttered this sequence of words.” It stated that Trump actually used the phrase “And we fight” around fifty-five minutes after saying “I’ll be there with you.” The allegations emphasised that the documentary was created as part of “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
The complaint pointed out that “concerns about the Panorama Documentary were raised internally before its dissemination, but the BBC ignored those concerns and did not take corrective action.” It further contended that the documentary “is part of the BBC’s longstanding pattern of manipulating President Trump’s speeches and misleadingly presenting content in order to defame him, including fabricating calls for violence that he never made.”
“The BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda. President Trump’s powerhouse lawsuit is holding the BBC accountable for its defamation and reckless election interference just as he has held other fake news mainstream media responsible for their wrongdoing,” noted Trump’s legal team.
Trump had already declared, “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.”
On 13th November, the BBC Chair Samir Shah apologised and accepted that they made an error in judgement. The broadcaster also conceded that the clip created a misleading perception that he had directly called for violence. The two most senior officials of the network resigned as a result of the development, which also triggered a PR disaster.
The BBC assured that it had no intention of rebroadcasting the documentary on any of its platforms in light of one of the most severe crises in its 103-year existence. The documentary did not air in the US.
However, the media house argued that there was no legal foundation for the complaint. Any payout to Trump, according to UK lawyers, might be politically problematic because the BBC is supported by a statutory licence fee on all TV viewers. The documentary came under fire after an external standards adviser leaked a BBC note that prompted suspicions about how it was produced.
Meanwhile, the lawsuit is the most recent in a slew of defamation cases against media platforms. Other media outlets, like as CBS and ABC, reached settlements with Trump when he sued them after storming to power last year. The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and an Iowa newspaper have lao been sued by Trump, but they denied allegations of misconduct.
