On December 16, 2025, it was reported that President Trump officially sued the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Monday night, December 15, accusing them of airing a news segment last year that was allegedly defamatory and demanding $10 billion in compensation.
The 33-page lawsuit alleges that BBC engaged in “false, defamatory, deceitful, derogatory, inciteful, and malicious descriptions of President Trump… The program was crafted and aired by the defendants the week before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, openly attempting to intervene and influence the election outcome to damage President Trump’s interests.”
On October 28, 2024, a program titled “Donald Trump: A Second Chance?” was broadcast by BBC, a production of the show “Panorama.”
The lawsuit claims that in this episode, BBC “spliced” together speech segments from President Trump before the January 6, 2021, Capitol breach, “deliberately and maliciously attempting to thoroughly mislead the audience.”
The lawsuit demands $10 billion in damages, citing implications for Trump’s personal brand value, along with “the harm caused by the defendants to President Trump’s commercial and personal reputation, and their attempt to portray President Trump as a violent insurgent in a false, malicious, and defamatory manner.”
It was widely expected that Trump would file a lawsuit. Hours before the lawsuit was officially filed, Trump had already announced at the White House his plans to bring legal action against the editorial staff for alleged defamation.
Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump stated, “They literally put words in my mouth. They made me say things I never said. I guess they used some kind of artificial intelligence (AI) or something.”
The controversy revolves around the editing of Trump’s speech on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., on January 6.
In the BBC program, editors spliced two segments of the speech together to create the illusion that Trump said the following words: “We’re going to the Capitol, I’ll be with you, we’re going to fight like hell. If we don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country.”
In reality, these segments were from different parts of the speech. One segment where Trump says, “We’re going down, I’ll be with you… we’re going to the Capitol,” and another segment 54 minutes later where he says, “We’re going to fight like hell. If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country.”
BBC stated that they had apologized to Trump personally last month, maintaining that the situation did not warrant legal action.
In a statement in November, the broadcasting company expressed regret for the video editing method while strongly opposing it as grounds for a defamation claim.
Subsequently, BBC acknowledged the misleading edit in their “Corrections and Clarifications” section. The company stated that the program in question would not be rebroadcast on any BBC platform.
On November 13, BBC wrote, “We acknowledge that our edit inadvertently created an illusion as if we presented a continuous segment of the speech, rather than excerpts from different positions in the speech, leading to a mistaken belief by the public that President Trump had directly called for violent action.”
The day after, Trump threatened for the first time to sue BBC and claim up to $5 billion, stating that an apology was insufficient.
Following the scandal, both the former BBC director-general and head of news resigned. Last month, Trump praised this on Truth Social, stating that they “have resigned/been fired because they were caught ‘tampering’ with my very wonderful speech on January 6.”
Trump mentioned plans to discuss the matter with UK Prime Minister Starmer and claimed the Prime Minister was “very embarrassed” by the scandal.
“This happened within our great ally, you know, which should be our great ally,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News last month.