Trump says he will sue the BBC for at least $1 billion over Panorama Edit

US President Donald Trump has said he will take legal action against the BBC over the way his speech was edited by Panorama, after the company apologized but refused to compensate him.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday evening, Trump said: “We’ll probably sue them sometime next week for somewhere between $1 billion and $5 billion.”

The BBC has said that the editing of the January 6, 2021 speech had inadvertently “created the false impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”.

The BBC apologized but said it would not pay any financial compensation.

The controversy led to the resignation of BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness.

“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters of his plan to take legal action. ‘They cheated. They changed the words that came out of my mouth.”

He said he had not raised the issue with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, but that Starmer had asked to speak to him, and that Trump would call him this weekend.

Earlier this week, the US president’s lawyers threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion in damages unless the company retracted, apologized and compensated him.

Searches of public court databases previously showed that no legal action has been taken to date.

Federal and state courts in Florida, where a case was likely to be filed, are now closed this weekend.

In an interview broadcast on GB News on Saturday and recorded before Trump confirmed he would take legal action, the US president said: “I’ve been doing this for a long time, I’ve never seen anything like it. That’s the most egregious. I think that was worse than the Kamala thing with CBS and 60 Minutes.”

In July this year, the American media company Paramount Global announced agreed to pay $16 million (£13.5 million) to settle a legal dispute with Trump over an interview it aired on CBS with former Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I think I have an obligation to do it,” he said. “If you don’t do it, you won’t prevent it from happening again to other people.”

The BBC’s apology came hours after one second, similarly edited clipto air on Newsnight in 2022, it has been revealed by the Daily Telegraph.

In its Corrections and Clarifications section, published on Thursday evening, the BBC said the Panorama program had been reviewed following criticism of the way Trump’s speech was edited.

“We accept that our editing inadvertently created the impression that we were showing one continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the false impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action,” the statement said.

Lawyers for the BBC have written to President Trump’s legal team in response to a letter received on Sunday, a BBC spokesperson said on Thursday.

“BBC Chairman Samir Shah has separately sent a personal letter to the White House expressing to President Trump that he and the company regret the editing of the President’s speech on January 6, 2021, which was included in the program,” they said.

They added: “While the BBC sincerely regrets the way the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree that there is a basis for a claim of defamation.”

In its letter to Trump’s legal team, the BBC set out five key arguments as to why it believed it had no case to answer.

First it said the BBC did not have the rights to distribute the Panorama episode on its US channels, and did not do so.

When the documentary was available on BBC iPlayer, it was limited to viewers in the UK.

Second, it said the documentary did not harm Trump, as he was re-elected shortly afterwards.

Third, it said that the clip was not intended to mislead, but only to shorten a long speech, and that the editing was not done with malice.

Fourth, it said the clip was never intended to be taken in isolation. Rather, it was twelve seconds within an hour-long program that also included many votes in support of Trump.

Finally, an opinion on a matter of public interest and political speech is heavily protected under defamation laws in the US.