Donald Trump has declared his intention to file a lawsuit against the BBC, criticizing the broadcaster for how it edited a speech he delivered in 2021 on the day his supporters stormed the Capitol.
The British Broadcasting Corporation issued a personal apology to the former U.S. President on Thursday. However, they maintained that there is no legal foundation for him to pursue a lawsuit over a documentary that Trump’s legal team has labeled as defamatory.
Following the BBC’s refusal to fully comply with Trump’s demands, he expressed to GB News that he felt a compelling ‘obligation’ to initiate legal proceedings during a heated interview.
“I’m not eager to engage in lawsuits, but I believe I have a duty to proceed. The situation was so outrageous,” Trump stated in conversation with GB News’ Bev Turner.
He added, “If you don’t take action, it won’t prevent similar incidents from occurring with others.”
On Friday, Trump reiterated his legal intentions to reporters outside the White House, announcing plans to seek damages ranging from $1 billion to $5 billion, with the lawsuit likely to be filed sometime next week.
‘I think I have to do it,’ he added.
The President had thrown down the gauntlet to the broadcaster with a deadline of 10pm on Thursday.
Donald Trump said he will sue the BBC as he blasted the broadcaster with a fiery rebuke to its apology last night
He had vowed to sue unless he got a full retraction, grovelling apology and offer of compensation for misleading Panorama viewers with an edit of his speech before the January 6 Capitol riot.
The BBC opted to defy the challenge and risk a high-stakes feud with the White House. It issued an apology on Thursday night but steadfastly refused to concede Mr Trump had a legal right to damages.
Corporation chiefs then had a nervous 24 hours braced for a nuclear response from Mr Trump.
The broadcaster gave a calculated response to Mr Trump’s vow by making an apology for giving Panorama viewers a misleading edit of Mr Trump’s speech before the Capitol riot.
Trump’s remarks on Friday came as he told GB News that London Mayor Sadiq Khan a ‘terrible, terrible mayor’.
He went on to say that Mr Khan ‘is a disaster’ and ‘a nasty person’, before making unsubstantiated claims that the British capital has areas where ‘the police won’t go’ and where Sharia Law is being exercised.
Mr Trump’s interview with GB News comes after the BBC defiantly refused to concede Mr Trump had a legal right to damages. Insiders said they were expecting a fierce rection from the President.
In a letter to BBC staff yesterday, seen by the Daily Mail, chairman Samir Shah acknowledged what ‘I fully understand has been a difficult week’, adding: ‘I’m aware there is sadness, anger and frustration in relation to what has happened in recent days and it is hard when the BBC is the focus of so much attention and news headlines.’
He said he had written to President Trump ‘personally to extend my apology’ but that ‘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’. Mr Shah thanked staff for their resilience in what ‘I fully appreciate have been challenging circumstances’.
The BBC had admitted ‘that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.’
Amid catastrophic consequences for the corporation, Director General Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, both fell on their swords on Sunday.
Earlier this week, Mr Trump remarked: ‘I guess I have to [sue]. Why not? They defrauded the public and they’ve admitted it. This is within one of our great allies, supposedly our great ally. That’s a pretty sad event. They actually changed my January 6 speech, which was a beautiful speech, which was a very calming speech, and they made it sound radical.’
He also told Fox News on Tuesday: ‘I think I have an obligation to [sue] because you can’t allow people to do that.’
Mr Trump said he would be ‘left with no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights… including by filing legal action for no less than 1,000,000,000 dollars [£760million] in damages,’ if the BBC failed to act.
When asked about Mr Trump’s legal threats, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the corporation is a ‘Leftist propaganda machine’.
As licence fee payers faced the prospect of a costly legal battle, the BBC’s legal team sent Mr Trump a letter setting out five reasons why it does not think it has a case to answer.
It said the documentary was restricted to viewers in the UK, did not cause Mr Trump any harm – as he was re-elected shortly after – and ‘was not designed to mislead, but just to shorten a long speech’.
Fourthly, it said the clip was 12 seconds within an hour-long programme, which also contained voices in support of Trump, and finally , an opinion on a matter of public concern and political speech is heavily protected under defamation laws in the US.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the corporation’s editorial standards and guidelines were ‘in some cases not robust enough and in other cases not consistently applied’.
