U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he intends to sue the BBC as early as next week, seeking between $1 billion and $5 billion in damages after the broadcaster admitted to wrongly editing portions of a speech he delivered on January 6, 2021. The BBC has acknowledged the error but maintains there is no legal basis for Trump’s defamation claim.
The controversy has plunged the British Broadcasting Corporation into one of its most serious crises in decades. Two senior leaders resigned earlier this week amid accusations of editorial bias, including over the segment that altered Trump’s remarks in a documentary aired on the broadcaster’s flagship programme, Panorama. Trump’s legal team had previously issued a Friday deadline demanding a full retraction, an apology and compensation, calling the edit “false, defamatory and financially damaging.”
The BBC on Thursday sent Trump a personal apology, but rejected the defamation charge and said it would not rebroadcast the documentary. The broadcaster described the edit as an “error of judgement” and insisted there was no intent to mislead viewers.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Florida, Trump said he believed legal action was now unavoidable.
“We’ll sue them for anywhere between $1 billion and $5 billion, probably sometime next week,” he said. “They’ve admitted they cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”
Trump said he had not yet spoken to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer but planned to do so over the weekend. According to Trump, Starmer had attempted to reach him and was “very embarrassed” by the incident.
The Panorama documentary strung together three excerpts from Trump’s January 6 speech delivered nearly an hour apart creating the impression he had directly encouraged supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol. His lawyers argue the edited sequence suggested that he incited the riot, a portrayal they described as “beyond fake” and “corrupt.”
In a separate interview with GB News, Trump said the edit amounted to “election interference.”
“Fake news isn’t strong enough. This is corrupt,” he said, insisting the apology was insufficient.
“They clipped together two parts of the speech that were nearly an hour apart to depict me as calling for aggression. One part was calming, the other they twisted. It’s incredible.”
On Thursday, BBC Chair Samir Shah said the broadcaster’s apology was appropriate and necessary, calling the edit an “error of judgement.” British Culture Minister Lisa Nandy echoed the sentiment, saying the apology was “right and necessary.”
The broadcaster, however, is now also examining fresh allegations that similar editing practices were used in a 2022 segment on Newsnight involving the same speech.
The crisis has prompted unprecedented scrutiny. BBC Director General Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness resigned this week as the corporation faces accusations of systemic editing failures and bias. In Parliament, Prime Minister Starmer defended the need for a “strong and independent BBC,” but said it must “get its house in order” following the scandal.
“In an age of disinformation, the argument for an impartial British news service is stronger than ever,” Starmer said, while warning that critics of the broadcaster would use the controversy to undermine public trust.
The BBC, founded in 1922 and funded largely by a mandatory licence fee, may also face questions over whether public money could be used in any legal settlement with Trump. Former media minister John Whittingdale said there would be “real anger” if licence fee funds were used to pay damages in the event of a successful lawsuit.
