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President Donald J. Trump announced his intention to pursue damages of up to $5 billion from the BBC, alleging the broadcaster’s misleading editing of his January 6th speech.
During a conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday evening, President Trump mentioned, as reported by ITV, “We’re planning to file a lawsuit ranging from $1 billion to $5 billion, likely next week.”
He emphasized the necessity of legal action, asserting, “We must proceed because they’ve admitted to their deception. There was no way they could avoid it. They altered the words from my speech.”
Earlier this month, a leaked internal BBC memo from a former ethics advisor revealed that a Panorama documentary had “materially misled” viewers before the previous year’s presidential election. It allegedly edited sections of President Trump’s January 6th, 2021 speech to falsely suggest he incited supporters to “fight” at the Capitol.
The memo also indicated that BBC leadership dismissed concerns about the “doctored” footage, allowing the documentary to remain available on their streaming platform for a year. Following the memo’s release, BBC Director General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness both resigned earlier this week.
On Friday, the BBC issued a formal apology to the U.S. President and admitted that the spliced edits in the Panorama documentary gave “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”. The broadcaster further said that it would not air the programme again. However, despite admitting fault, the BBC said that it does not plan to pay any damages in compensation to Trump.
The state broadcaster argued that the documentary did not harm Trump, given that he won the 2024 election after it was aired, that the documentary was not broadcast in the United States, and that other pro-Trump voices were featured in the film. The BBC also claimed that the misleading edits were not malicious, but rather were made due to time constraints.
In an interview with GB News on Friday, President Trump said that he felt an “obligation” to launch legal action against the BBC, saying: “This was so egregious. If you don’t do it, you don’t stop it from happening again with other people. I’d like to find out why they did it.”
“You know, the word fake is one thing but this is beyond fake. This is corrupt what they did,” he added.
The president said that he has not discussed the matter with British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
However, Trump has received the backing of former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss. Speaking to Fox News, Truss said that “lots of people in Britain are cheering Trump on and who want him to sue the BBC because they are a huge problem.”
“They’ve lied, they’ve cheated, they’ve fiddled with footage. Both in the case of President Trump but also covering up what’s happening in Britain, whether it be mass migration, whether it’s our economic problems.”
“They are always biased towards the left, and the British taxpayer has had to pay for all of this fake news,” Truss said, adding that she believes the BBC should be defunded and “put out of its misery”.
