US President Donald Trump wants to sue the BBC and demand billions of dollars from the British broadcaster. The lawsuit will be filed “probably sometime next week” and will cost between a billion and five billion dollars, Republicans told reporters on government flight Air Force One. The background is a dispute about a TV show.
In essence, the lawsuit is about a compilation of Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021 which the broadcaster used for the “Panorama” program. The broadcast occurred 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 broadcast and demanded that steps be taken to avoid lawsuits before Friday’s deadline.
Broadcast about the storming of the Capitol
For the show he had BBC Different parts of Trump’s speech to his supporters at the time were edited together. That day saw a violent storming of the Capitol in the US capital, Washington, where the victory of Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, was to be officially confirmed.
Trump – who later resigned from office after his first term (2017-2021) but is still in office – in his speech repeated his repeated statements denying claims that he had been deprived of his election victory due to fraud. After his speech, Trump supporters stormed the parliament building.
The BBC has now admitted its error. The broadcast unintentionally gave the impression that it was a coherent piece of speech. This could give the impression that Trump is directly calling 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 TV channel boss Tim Davie and news reporter Deborah Turness.
The BBC sees no basis for the defamation claim
Trump’s legal team has threatened the BBC in a letter that it will file a lawsuit if the broadcaster does not apologize, withdraw the broadcast and pay compensation. The lawyers gave the BBC a deadline of Friday evening and threatened to sue for at least a billion US dollars (equivalent to more than 860 million euros). Hours after the deadline, Trump announced he wanted to sue.
The BBC announced on its website that the program would no longer be broadcast. However, the broadcaster did not want to pay compensation. Media companies see no basis for a defamation lawsuit.
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