Trump finally sues the BBC for $10 billion

LondonThe threat has become a realityThrough his legal representatives, Donald Trump finally sued the BBC on Monday night in a Florida court over the broadcast of a report on the program Panorama Just days before the 2024 election, the president filed a lawsuit in 33 pages accusing the British public broadcaster of "defamation, malicious manipulation, and attempted interference" in last year's White House race. Trump is seeking $10 billion in damages, approximately €8.51 billion. The lawsuit allocates $5 billion for alleged defamation and another $5 billion for violations of Florida's law on deceptive and unfair business practices. Initially, Trump threatened the network with a $1 billion lawsuit, and later $5 billion. Now he has doubled down. The lawsuit alleges that the program's producers edited a speech Trump gave on January 6, 2021, when he had The assault on the Capitol has begun. by violent supporters of the Republican. Last month, the BBC already apologized for splicing together two separate excerpts of the president's remarks in the report, fifty minutes apart. The failure to indicate the time difference could give the impression that Trump had called for violence. The result, the network admitted, could be misleading. However, the court document maintains that it was not an innocent mistake, but a "false, misleading, and malicious representation" intended to politically damage Donald Trump.

And while the program's editing was, at best, not entirely orthodox, it is no less true that in the days leading up to January 6, Trump had more or less subtly called for subverting the election results with all sorts of misleading statements about the fairness of the election that delivered his victory. The document expands the scope of the accusations and claims that the broadcast of the documentary, prior to the 2024 election, was a "blatant attempt to interfere with and influence the election outcome" to the detriment of the Republican candidate. According to the lawsuit, the objective was to make him lose the election, a claim the BBC denied. As is well known, Trump won the election. One of the key points of the litigation is the question of jurisdiction. The BBC had argued that the case could not succeed in the United States because the documentary did not have distribution rights on American channels and, therefore, could not have been seen in the state of Florida, where Trump resides and where the lawsuit was filed. The president's legal team rejects this argument and claims that there were several ways in which American citizens, including Florida residents, could have accessed the content. As of Tuesday morning, the corporation stated that it will defend its position.

The text also challenges the BBC's defense that there can be no defamation because Trump ultimately won the election, including the victory in Florida. Therefore, there would have been no actual harm. The president's lawyers counter that the editing of the documentary caused "enormous economic damage" to both his reputation and the value of his personal brand. Furthermore, the lawsuit accuses the BBC of maintaining a sustained pattern of negative coverage against Trump, which it describes as a modus operandi lacking any "pretense of objectivity".

Common practice

This new legal battle is part of a broader strategy by the US president against various media outlets. In recent months, Trump has threatened or initiated legal action against several journalistic organizations, some of which have been settled out of court, perhaps the latest attempt in this case as well. It's worth recalling that Trump sued the CBS following an interview with Democratic candidate Kamala Harrisand that the network ultimately paid her $16.5 million. Trump's initial demand was for $10 billion, arguing that the edit lent credence to the Democrat's claims. According to White House sources, the BBC's initial admission of the editing error, while denying any malicious intent, gave the president's legal team the confidence to pursue a lawsuit whose content suggests a particularly forceful tone. The case originated in November following the publication in the conservative newspaper The Daily Telegraph from a nineteen-page internal report that exposed editorial irregularities, including the manipulation of Donald Trump's speech, as well as alleged anti-Israel bias and censorship in the debate on gender issues. Following the controversy and the attacks and threats from the White House, the editor-in-chief, Tim Davie, and the head of news, Deborah Turness, They submitted their resignationsIn addition, the chairman of the BBC's governing council, Samir Shah, sent a personal letter to the White House to express his "regret" for the way the video was edited.