Kayla Epsteinand
Madeline Halpert,in New York
PA Media
US President Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for damages up to $1bn (£760m), claiming the organisation made “false, defamatory, disparaging and inflammatory statements” about him in a documentary.
In a letter to the BBC, Trump’s legal team demanded three things – to issue a “full and fair retraction” of the programme, an apology and that the BBC “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused”.
But experts on US media and defamation law say the president faces significant obstacles to winning such enormous damages from a lawsuit against the BBC, partly due to strong US press freedom laws.
Trump has signalled an intention to bring any eventual litigation in the US state of Florida, where he has legal residency, rather than in the UK. So how strong is Trump’s case?
The controversy began last week, after the Telegraph newspaper published a leaked memo that criticised a documentary by the BBC’s Panorama programme and the way it had edited Trump’s speech in January 2021, on the day of the US Capitol riot in Washington DC.
The memo, which was written by a former independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial standards committee, suggested the Panorama programme had edited parts of a Trump speech together so he appeared to explicitly encourage the riot.
The one-hour programme was broadcast in the UK just before the 2024 presidential election.
In the 2021 address, Trump said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
However, in the Panorama edit he was shown saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The two sections of the speech that were edited together were more than 50 minutes apart.
Trump’s address on the Ellipse was delivered as Congress was set to certify the 2020 election results for the winner, Joe Biden. Minutes after he concluded his speech, a large crowd of his supporters breached the US Capitol.
Days later, the US House of Representatives voted to impeach the president on a count of “incitement of insurrection” and the Senate later acquitted him. Trump has said his speech was “perfect”.
BBC chairman Samir Shah has apologised for an “error of judgement” over the edit. And Tim Davie, who resigned as BBC director general, said: “I think we did make a mistake, and there was an editorial breach.”
After Davie and the CEO of the BBC’s news division quit, the White House threatened legal action.
Trump’s lawyer said in his letter to the BBC that in the documentary, the corporation ha
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