Donald Trump sues BBC for £7.5bn

That's a lot of damage

The speech, which was broadcast in an episode of BBC's Panorama series, saw parts of Trump's speech at the US Capitol spliced together.

Trump accused the broadcaster of defamation and of violating trade practices, according to court documents filed in Florida.

The US president is claiming $5bn (£3.75bn) for defamation and another $5bn for the violation of trade practices, totalling $10bn (£7.5bn).

Trump's legal team released a statement to the New York Times saying that it intends to hold the BBC accountable for what it perceives as wrongdoing.

The statement read: "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."

The contentious piece of editing which is under scrutiny came in the documentary when Trump addressed a crowd at the US Capitol, before the riots broke out.

The words which Panorama broadcast were: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol... and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."

However, the full, unedited footage shows that Trump actually said: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women."

And then, more than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: "And we fight. We fight like hell."

However, these two sentences had been spliced together during editing, with the BBC acknowledging that the fusion had given "the mistaken impression" Trump had "made a direct call for violent action".

The corporation has, however, disagreed that this gives Trump grounds to sue the BBC.

One of the BBC's key defences against Trump's claims of defamation is that he was re-elected as president shortly after the documentary aired, so they say the film had no effect on the election.

Meanwhile, they also point out that, because the film was not available to US viewers and restricted to the UK only, that it was not possible the corporation could have swayed opinion on the president.

Trump's legal team say that Americans still could have accessed the content via a VPN or the streaming service BritBox.

The amount of money Trump is suing for would be catastrophic for the BBC if he does win.

For reference, the BBC makes around £3.8bn from licence fees each year as per government data.

Annually it makes around £5.4bn each year.