WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Monday seeking $10 billion in damages from the BBC, accusing the British broadcaster of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices.
The 33-page lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump,” calling it “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
It accused the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021” in order to ”intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.”
The lawsuit, filed in a Florida court, seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.
@shalafi @Diddlydee did you see the programme in question, though? I mean, none of us can, now, and I didn’t see it at the time. But it’s one very small clip in the context of a much longer programme, so surely the whole context would be relevant here. Was the *programme* misrepresenting him? Not just this clip, a few seconds long.
@shalafi @Diddlydee NB in British law he’d have had a much better chance because if someone claims defamation, the statement in question is presumed false unless the person/org who made it can prove it is true. Which is an incredibly high bar in a lot of circumstances and leads to people being very careful with their words - and is also why this whole situation is really strange from the outset as the BBC have to be pretty hot on this kind of thing.