Donald Trump Drops Part of His Multibillion-Dollar BBC Lawsuit

Donald Trump’s war with the press just got (slightly) smaller in scale. He dropped BBC Studios from his lawsuit against the BBC over an episode of the documentary series Panorama from 2024. He is still suing the main company for up to $10 billion, but its subsidiaries, BBC Studios Productions and BBC Studios Distribution, were dropped as defendants. The BBC itself argued that the Studio had “no role in creating or producing the documentary, and did not broadcast it in the US,” per the BBC. However, his court filing agreeing also made sure to emphasize that “President Trump shall continue prosecuting his causes of action against defendant British Broadcasting Corporation.”

The lawsuit, filed in December in Florida, claims two distinct parts of the same speech were spliced together for the series to make it sound like Trump called for violent action that led directly to the January 6 riots. “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” Trump said in his actual speech. In Panorama’s edit of the speech, he says, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like Hell.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, those moments were approximately 50 minutes apart in the actual speech.

The BBC has since apologized for the error. “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 company said in a statement. Still, it denied the need for compensation, partially because the program was never broadcast in the United States. Per the BBC, Trump’s lawyers now agree that there is no evidence that the company broadcast the documentary on their streamer BritBox, nor did they show it via American broadcasters, BBC.com, or BBC Select. But Trump’s lawyers now argue that the BBC’s active geo-blocking on its iPlayer app was not sufficient to prevent American viewers from seeing the documentary. If the case progresses, there’s a trial date in February 2027. Can’t wait!