US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on Air Force One on the way to his Mar-a-Lago estate. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP/dpa
Keystone
US President Donald Trump wants to sue the BBC and demand a billion-dollar sum from the British broadcaster.
The lawsuit will be filed “probably sometime next week” and will call for a sum of between one billion and five billion dollars, the Republican announced to journalists on the government plane Air Force One. The background is a dispute over a TV program.
At its core, the lawsuit is about the edited version of a speech Trump gave on January 6, 2021, which the broadcaster used for the program “Panorama”. The broadcast took place shortly before the presidential election in November 2024, which Trump won against Democrat Kamala Harris. Trump’s legal team recently threatened legal action over the program and demanded that several steps be taken before a Friday deadline to avert a lawsuit.
Broadcast about storming the Capitol
For the broadcast, the BBC had edited together passages from different parts of Trump’s speech to his supporters at the time. On that day, there had been a violent storming of the Capitol in the US capital Washington, where the election victory of Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden was to be officially confirmed.
In his speech, Trump – who had been voted out of office after his first term (2017-2021) but was still in office – repeated his repeatedly refuted claim that he had been cheated out of his election victory. After the speech, Trump’s supporters stormed the seat of parliament.
The BBC has since admitted mistakes. The impression was unintentionally created in the broadcast that it was one continuous section of the speech. This could have given the impression that Trump had directly called for violence, according to the BBC website. The broadcaster also apologized to Trump. The case was cited as the main reason for the resignation of broadcaster boss Tim Davie and journalist Deborah Turness, who is responsible for news operations.
BBC saw no basis for defamation suit
Trump’s legal team had threatened the BBC in a letter that they would file a lawsuit if the broadcaster did not apologize, withdraw the programme and pay compensation. The lawyers set the BBC a deadline of Friday evening and threatened to sue for at least one billion US dollars (equivalent to just over 860 million euros). A few hours after the deadline expired, Trump then announced that he intended to sue.
The BBC announced on its website that the program would no longer be broadcast. However, the broadcaster did not want to pay any compensation. The media company saw no basis for a libel suit.