Daijiworld Media Network - Washington

Washington, Dec 16: US President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit seeking $10 billion in damages from British broadcaster BBC, accusing it of defamation and engaging in deceptive and unfair trade practices.

In the 33-page lawsuit filed on Monday, Trump alleged that the BBC aired a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory and malicious depiction” of him, describing it as a “brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 US presidential election.

The lawsuit accused the broadcaster of splicing together two separate portions of Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech to “intentionally misrepresent” his words and their meaning. The speech was delivered shortly before some of his supporters stormed the US Capitol, as Congress was preparing to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, which Trump has repeatedly claimed was stolen.

Last month, the BBC had apologised to Trump over the edited clip but rejected allegations of defamation, even as Trump threatened legal action. BBC chairman Samir Shah termed the incident an “error of judgment,” which led to the resignation of the broadcaster’s top executive and its head of news.

The edited speech featured in an hour-long documentary titled ‘Trump: A Second Chance?’, aired just days before the 2024 presidential election. The programme stitched together three excerpts from two different sections of the speech delivered nearly an hour apart, presenting them as a single quote in which Trump appeared to urge supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.”

The lawsuit noted that the BBC cut out a key section in which Trump had called on his supporters to protest peacefully, alleging that the omission fundamentally altered the context and intent of his remarks.