Donald Trump threatens to sue the BBC for $1.5 billion over Panorama January 6 documentary

President Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for $US1 billion ($1.5b) over a documentary that his lawyer claimed included “malicious, disparaging” edits to a speech Mr Trump delivered on January 6, 2021.

The legal threat came in a letter on Monday, local time, from Alejandro Brito, one of Mr Trump’s lawyers, to the BBC that was obtained by The New York Times.

The letter demanded a full retraction of the documentary, an apology and what his lawyers said would be payments that “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused.”

The letter said that if those demands were not met, “President Trump will be left with no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights, all of which are expressly reserved and are not waived, including by filing legal action for no less than $1,000,000,000 (One Billion Dollars) in damages.”

It said the lawsuit would be filed if the BBC does not take action by Friday at 5pm, US eastern time.

“The BBC is on notice,” the letter said, adding, “PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY.”

The head of the BBC, Tim Davie, and the CEO of BBC News, Deborah Turness, resigned Sunday after growing pressure over the editing of the documentary.

The BBC said on its website that it had received a letter threatening legal action and that it would “respond in due course.”

The documentary, called Trump: A Second Chance? and broadcast before the presidential election last year, had already been removed from the BBC’s online player.

Samir Shah, the BBC’s chair, said in a separate letter Monday that complaints about the editing of the clip had been discussed by the standards committee in January and May, and that the points raised in the review had been relayed to the BBC team that produced the documentary, part of a long-running current affairs series called Panorama.

“With hindsight, it would have been better to take more formal action,” he wrote.

He added: “We accept that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action. The BBC would like to apologise for that error of judgment.”

Mr Trump has repeatedly used lawsuits to put pressure on media companies and journalists that he does not like.

In October 2024, Mr Trump filed a lawsuit claiming that CBS News had edited a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, then the Democratic nominee for president, to make her answers look more sophisticated than they were. Paramount Global, the network’s owner, agreed to pay $US16 million to Mr Trump in July to settle the case.

This year, the President sued The New York Times and three of its reporters for $US15 billion for what he claimed were false and malicious stories about him that appeared in the newspaper. He also sued Penguin Random House, the publisher of a book written by two Times reporters.

Judge Steven D. Merryday of the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida initially rejected the President’s complaint, calling it unnecessarily long and saying that “a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective.”

The President later refiled the case, dropping one defendant and making the complaint shorter.

A spokesperson for the Times responded to the refiled claim by saying it had no merit and was “merely an attempt to stifle independent reporting and generate PR attention.”

In Monday’s letter to the BBC, the President’s lawyer focuses on the documentary, saying that it wrongly combined clips of the President’s January 6 speech to create the impression that Mr Trump was urging his followers to commit violence.

The letter cites a leaked memo written by a former adviser to the BBC standards committee, Michael Prescott, which was highly critical of the way the documentary was edited, along with several other aspects of BBC editorial output.

While Mr Shah, the BBC’s chair, apologised for the Panorama edit in his letter to a parliamentary committee Monday, he also criticised Mr Prescott’s memo, saying it was a “personal account” and “did not present a full picture of the discussions, decisions and actions” by the broadcaster.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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