The BBC said today that it will defend itself against a defamation lawsuit filed in the U.S. courts by Donald Trump, who is seeking $10 billion from the British public broadcaster over the airing of edited excerpts of his speech on January 6, 2021, before his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
“As we have already made clear, we will defend this case. We will not make further comments on the ongoing legal proceedings,” a BBC spokesperson said in a statement.
Trump argues that the way the excerpts were edited portrayed him as urging his supporters to go with him to Congress and to fight “like hell,” while omitting the phrase in which he called for the protest to remain peaceful, before his supporters carried out the violent storming of the Capitol in an attempt to block the formal certification of his Democratic rival Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
The BBC has already issued a public apology to the U.S. president, acknowledged that an error of judgment was made, and admitted that the editing created the false impression that he directly called for violence. However, it added that it does not believe there is a legal basis for a lawsuit.
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