The US president alleges that an episode of Panorama which controversially spliced together two distinct parts of a speech he gave before his supporters stormed the US Capitol in January 2021 was “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory and malicious”.

The airing of the programme in the UK a week before the 2024 election was “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment”, the legal complaint continues.

The lawsuit alleges that the programme was available in the US to subscribers of commercial streaming service BritBox and could also be accessed from the BBC website by using a virtual private network (VPN) to bypass geo-blocking.

The BBC apologised last month for the editing of the speech, which it said had given “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”, but refused to pay compensation.

Having initially threatened to sue for $1 billion, Trump’s lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida seeks $5 billion for defamation and a further $5 billion under a Florida law relating to unfair trade practices.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) previously described Trump’s threat to sue as “tantamount to a mega SLAPP” and said it was part of a campaign to intimidate the media in the US and abroad.

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said: “The BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda.

“President Trump’s powerhouse lawsuit is holding the BBC accountable for its defamation and reckless election interference just as he has held other fake news mainstream media responsible for their wrongdoing.”