US president has said he will bring proceedings if the documentary containing an edited speech from 6 January 2021 is not retracted
Donald Trump has grabbed the headlines after threatening to sue the BBC for $1bn (£760m) for what the corporation has accepted was a misleading edit of his speech on 6 January 2021 during the Capitol Hill insurrection. Here the Guardian examines the US president’s potential path to bringing and winning a libel claim.
As the Panorama episode was first broadcast on 28 October last year, Trump has missed the boat for filing a defamation claim in London, where it must be brought within a year. However, in Florida the statute of limitations is two years, so he is not timed out, and BBC content is available through BBC.com in the US, where there is also the BBC Select streaming service.
A letter from Trump’s lawyer to the BBC notified them of his intention to bring proceedings in Florida if there is “not a full and fair retraction of the documentary”, an apology and appropriate compensation for the harm caused.
In the UK the biggest defamation award made by a court is believed to be £1.5m, but in the US the highest award was the $1.4bn, the Infowars founder and conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, was ordered to pay to the families of victims from the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, which he claimed was a hoax.
