President Donald Trump on Monday filed a lawsuit seeking $10 billion in damages from the British Broadcasting Corporation, accusing the publicly funded broadcaster of defamation over a documentary that aired one week before the 2024 presidential election.

The 33-page complaint, filed in federal court in Miami, alleges the BBC produced "a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump" that constituted "a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence" the election's outcome.

The lawsuit seeks $5 billion on a defamation claim and another $5 billion for an alleged violation of Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. Trump is requesting a jury trial.

"The formerly respected and now disgraced BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election," a spokesperson for Trump's legal team said in a statement provided to Fox News.

The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Associated Press after the suit was filed Monday. A spokesperson earlier in the day told Reuters that the broadcaster had not had any contact from Trump's legal team.

The documentary edit

The lawsuit centers on a BBC Panorama documentary titled "Trump: A Second Chance?" which aired on Oct. 28, 2024. The episode examined Trump's role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

According to the complaint, the BBC spliced together three video excerpts from Trump's speech at the Ellipse that day, creating the impression he made a direct call for violence.

In the edited clip, Trump appears to say: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

The lawsuit states that these remarks came from separate portions of the speech delivered nearly an hour apart. The first sentence, in which Trump told supporters to march to the Capitol, occurred 14 minutes and 52 seconds into the speech. The "fight like hell" comments came 69 minutes and 30 seconds into the address.

The documentary omitted a section where Trump urged his supporters to demonstrate "peacefully." The lawsuit argues the edit "intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said."

"I'm suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth—literally to put words in my mouth," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. "They had me saying things that I never said coming out. I guess they used AI or something. So we'll be bringing that lawsuit."

The complaint does not mention artificial intelligence.

BBC's prior response

The controversy over the documentary emerged publicly in early November after the Telegraph, a British newspaper, published a whistleblower report from Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee.

The BBC acknowledged the editing error on Nov. 13 in its Corrections and Clarifications section. The broadcaster said the episode would not be rebroadcast on any BBC platforms.

"We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action," the BBC wrote.

BBC Chairman Samir Shah called the edit an "error of judgment." Director-General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness resigned in November amid the fallout.

Despite apologizing, the BBC rejected any legal basis for Trump's defamation claim.

"While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim," the broadcaster said in a statement last month.

Shah wrote in a memo to staffers that the BBC's position had not changed.

"There is a lot being written, said and speculated upon about the possibility of legal action, including potential costs or settlements. In all this we are, of course, acutely aware of the privilege of our funding and the need to protect our licence fee payers, the British public," Shah wrote.

Legal hurdles and jurisdiction questions

Legal experts have identified potential challenges to the case. The one-year statute of limitations to sue for defamation in British courts expired in October, which is why the lawsuit was filed in the United States.

Jonathan Peters, a media law expert and associate dean at the University of Georgia's journalism school, has noted that Trump faces significant hurdles in proving defamation.

"Even if Trump could point to inaccuracies in the documentary, mere mistakes are not enough; he'd need evidence that the BBC at least subjectively doubted the truth of what it published," Peters previously wrote.

The BBC has maintained that the documentary never aired in the United States and is not available on any of its platforms. However, Trump's lawyers argue they have standing to sue in U.S. federal court because the program could have been accessed by American subscribers of BritBox, which is owned by the BBC. The lawsuit also claims U.S. residents could have accessed the BBC's U.K.-only streaming service, iPlayer, through a virtual private network.

The 103-year-old BBC is funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds—approximately $230—paid by every British household that watches live television or BBC content. The broadcaster has faced financial pressures in recent years, losing 300,000 household licenses in the 12 months leading up to March, according to a report from Parliament's Public Accounts Committee.

Trump's media lawsuit record

The lawsuit against the BBC follows a series of legal actions Trump has brought against American media organizations.

In July, Paramount Global and CBS agreed to pay $16 million to settle Trump's lawsuit over how the network edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign. Trump's legal team argued the network's use of edited clips constituted election interference.

That settlement came shortly after ABC apologized and paid $15 million to resolve Trump's defamation case against anchor George Stephanopoulos. The lawsuit stemmed from Stephanopoulos saying on air that Trump had been held "liable for rape" when the jury in the E. Jean Carroll civil case had actually found Trump liable for "sexual abuse."

Trump has also won a combined $60 million in settlements this year from X, Meta, and YouTube over the suspension of his accounts following the Jan. 6 riot.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is also examining the BBC's editing practices related to Trump's speech.