Donald Trump has announced plans to sue the BBC, despite receiving a personal apology over a controversial Panorama documentary that his lawyers say defamed him.
Speaking from Air Force One on Friday night, the president vowed to file a lawsuit “for anywhere between a billion and $5bn” as early as next week. He told reporters: “We have to do it.”
The move follows the BBC’s admission that a Panorama episode, aired just before the 2024 election, had misleadingly put together parts of a 2021 speech Trump gave ahead of the January 6 Capitol riot.
The edit made it appear as if the 79-year-old had directly urged supporters: "We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell," claims he says was completely fabricated.
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Donald Trump plans to sue the BBC. Credit: Andrew Harnik / Getty
BBC edit fallout sparks resignations and legal firestorm
The scandal has already triggered a major shakeup at the BBC, with both director-general Tim Davie and BBC News chief Deborah Turness stepping down following backlash over the broadcast.
BBC chair Samir Shah sent a personal letter of apology to the White House, calling the edit “an error of judgment," per The Guardian.
The broadcaster also published a formal retraction on the programme’s webpage and promised never to air the episode again. A BBC spokesperson said: “While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim.”
But the president isn’t backing down. “I made a beautiful statement, and they made it into a not beautiful statement,” he said in an interview with GB News. “Fake news was a great term, except it’s not strong enough. This is beyond fake, this is corrupt.”
The lawsuit, he added, is not just about himself: “I think I have an obligation to do it...This was so egregious. If you don’t do it, you don’t stop it from happening again with other people.”
Trump claims the UK public is "very angry"
Trump said he hasn’t yet spoken with British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer but plans to call him soon.
“I think I have to do it,” he said. “They’ve even admitted that they cheated… They changed the words coming out of my mouth. The people of the UK are very angry about what happened.”
He alleged that Starmer was “very embarrassed” by the affair.
The president also told GB News he has had “a lot of success” litigating against news organisations.
“Because it’s fake news,” he continued. “But I’ve never had anything so fake as the BBC... I’ve been doing this for a long time, I’ve never seen anything like (the BBC edit). That’s, that’s the most egregious... I think that was worse than the Kamala (Harris) thing with CBS and 60 Minutes."
That was a reference to a previous legal battle, in which Trump secured a $16 million settlement from Paramount over a disputed 2024 CBS interview with former vice president Kamala Harris.
The BBC apologised to Trump for a Panorama episode that spliced parts of his 6 January 2021 speech together. Credit: Anadolu / Getty
Now, Trump says his administration will be “finding out a lot of things over the next few months” through litigation, suggesting the Panorama case could be just the beginning.
The lawsuit will “probably” be filed in the US, although he noted that litigation in the UK “moves a little bit quickly".
And the trouble for the BBC might not be over, as according to The Telegraph’s Daily T podcast, a 2022 edition of Newsnight reportedly featured a similarly edited version of Trump’s Capitol speech.
A spokesperson said: “This matter has been brought to our attention and we are now looking into it.”