President Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC, the British broadcaster and one of the world’s most renowned journalistic organizations, for $1 billion over how it edited a tiny segment of a documentary it aired about his political comeback in October 2024. Already the storm has forced the BBC’s director general and its CEO of news to quit, and Trump claims to be pressing ahead. Here England’s most distinguished libel lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson, tells the president why this is a court case he cannot win.
Donald Trump’s vainglorious threat to sue the BBC for $1 billion in damages over reporting in its flagship Panorama program about his campaign for re-election could well be his undoing.
It is absurd, for a start, because his lawyers appear ignorant of the fact that libel damages in the United Kingdom are capped at about £350,000 (roughly $458,000)—and that is for false claims that the plaintiff is a murderer or a pedophile. Million-plus awards were struck down years ago as likely to chill the exercise of free speech.
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