Trump threatens to take legal action against BBC over Panorama documentary edit

US President Donald Trump said he would take strong legal action against the BBC over how his speech was edited by Panorama in a documentary. While the corporation issued a public apology over the scandal, it refused to compensate him.

While speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Friday evening, Trump said, “We’ll sue them for anywhere between $1 billion and $5 billion probably sometime next week.” The BBC said that the edit of the 6 January 2021 speech had unintentionally given “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”.

The British broadcaster, however, maintained that it would not pay any form of financial compensation for it. The scandal eventually led to the resignations 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 coming out of my mouth.”

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Will Trump sue the BBC?

While speaking to reporters, the American leader said he had not raised the issue with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer but that Starmer had asked to speak to him, and Trump would call him over the weekend. Earlier this week, Washington lawyers threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion in damages unless the corporation issued a retraction, apologised and compensated him.

However, searches of the public court records database showed no legal action had been filed so far. In an interview with GB News on Saturday, Trump said, “he has never seen anything like this before”. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, I’ve never seen anything like that. That’s, that’s the most egregious. I think that was worse than the Kamala thing with CBS and 60 Minutes.”

In July this year, American media company Paramount Global agreed to pay $16 million to settle a legal dispute with Trump regarding an interview it broadcast 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 don’t stop it from happening again with other people,” he added.

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