The BBC has vowed to defend itself against the $10bn lawsuit that the US president, Donald Trump filed against it.
In a complaint filed on Monday evening, Trump sought $5bn in damages each on two counts, alleging that the BBC defamed him, and that it violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
Trump alleged the broadcaster “intentionally, maliciously and deceptively” edited the 6 January speech he gave before the attack on the US Capitol.
The BBC has previously acknowledged the editing was an “error of judgment” and apologised to Trump, but insisted there was no legal basis for a defamation claim. Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, and Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, resigned over the controversy last month.
Trump is a resident of Florida, and the BBC does business in Florida via the website, BBCNews, Britbox licensing, etc. The complaint even talks about gray-market VPN viewing of iPlayer. Jurisdiction isn’t really the issue. Establishing any actual harm at all will be the issue, to say nothing of “billions” of dollars worth of it from some splicing that is honestly editorial shading at worst. He is super pissed off in that speech, issues way more shaded threats than calls to peaceful actions, and pardoned the people who killed or injured multiple Capitol Police. Proving that the 10 or twenty people in Florida who actually saw the thing is worth anything to a plaintiff who won the fucking election is going to be an incredibly tall order for any half-way conscientious judge or jury.
It’s typical Trump “lawfare,” complete with breathless nonsense adjectives in the complaint to make the diaper baby anger-happy when he reads it. Only the sheer awfulness and expense of American litigation makes it even conceivable that the BBC will eventually settle, and if they do it will probably be right before discovery after they exhaust any motions to dismiss and other procedural tactics.
Honestly the beeb should just go “ok fuck you” and stop doing any business in Florida.
Most comanies of the world should say that and stop doing business in the whole of the united state of fascism until the orange child rapist dies.
Or it learns to stop being such a massive cunt, but, let’s face it, there’s no chance of that happening. So it’s back to dying, which I hope will be excruciating.