News Beat
Trump Lawyers Quote Liz Truss In $10bn Defamation Case Against BBC
Donald Trump’s lawyers used comments from former prime minister Liz Truss to strengthen the US president’s enormous legal case against the BBC over a Panorama edit.
Trump announced on Tuesday that he had officially filed a $10 billion (£7.4bn) defamation lawsuit against the broadcaster in Florida.
It comes after a 2024 Panorama episode spliced together two parts of Trump’s speech to his supporters ahead of the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021.
Critics accused the BBC of falsely making it look like Trump had incited the violence, which the US president denies.
The 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 US presidential election.
Truss, known for her historically short period in Downing Street, has drifted further towards MAGA-land since being kicked out of office in 2022 and then losing her seat in 2024.
She has called for a Trump-style “revolution” in the UK, and spoken at multiple right-wing events in the States attacking the state of Britain.
So it’s perhaps not surprising that her words have been used to prop up Trump’s case.
The lawsuit quotes the ex-PM’s criticism of the broadcaster after the Panorama saga first erupted, when she said the BBC was a lost “paragon” of journalism, and the broadcaster had long been promoting “fake news”.
The legal document says in full:
“No less an authority than the United Kingdom’s former prime minister, Liz Truss, discussed this bias, the need to hold the BBC accountable, and the BBC’s pattern of actual malice.
“Remarked Truss: ‘[The BBC] is a huge problem. They’ve lied, they’ve cheated, they’ve fiddled with footage, especially in the case of President Trump, but also covering up what’s happening in Britain whether it’s mass migration, whether it’s our economic problems, they are always biased towards the left . . . .’
“She was also asked whether the BBC’s tepid apology was sufficient, and responded: ‘No I don’t, because they keep doing it again and again. They have painted a completely false picture of President Trump in Britain over a number of years, they’ve done the same thing about conservatives in our country . . . .’ Lamenting the BBC’s lost status as a ‘paragon’ of journalism, she remarked that the BBC’s ‘fake news’ has caused immense harm to the public for a long time.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch was also mentioned in the document, as she has regularly accused the broadcaster of left-wing bias too.
“Conservative party leader and member of parliament Kemi Badenoch said that the distortion of the speech by the Panorama documentary was ‘absolutely shocking,’ adding: ‘That is fake news, actually putting different things together to make something look different from what it actually was.’
“She continued: ‘And I do think heads should roll. Whoever it was who did that should be sacked, that’s what Tim Davie should be doing, identifying who put out misinformation, and sacking them.’
“Badenoch added: ‘The public need to be able to trust our public broadcaster .. . They should not be telling us things that are not true. This is a corporation that needs to hold itself to the highest standards, and that means that when we see people doing the wrong thing, they should be punished, they should be sacked.’”
Prime minister Keir Starmer is yet to comment on Trump’s decision to file a lawsuit.
Health minister Stephen Kinnock responded on Tuesday morning, telling Sky News: “The government is a massive supporter of the BBC. The Labour party will always stand up for the BBC as a vitally important institution.
“Yes, there were some mistakes made in that particular piece of film, but I think the broader argument that they were making, they’re right to stick by their guns on that and I hope that they will continue to do so.”
The BBC has vowed to defend itself. In a statement, a spokesperson said: “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case. We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”
