Trump threatens $1 billion lawsuit against BBC over edited documentary

US President Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion over what he describes as a “false and defamatory” portrayal in a Panorama documentary that has sparked a major crisis within the broadcaster and led to the resignation of two senior executives.

In a letter sent to the BBC, Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito demanded a full retraction of what he called “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements” contained in the programme Trump: A Second Chance?, aired a week before the 2024 US presidential election. The letter gives the BBC until Friday to issue a “full and fair” retraction and to “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused” or face legal action in Florida.

“The BBC is on notice. PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY,” the letter warns. The broadcaster has yet to issue an official response, a report in Al Jazeera said.

The controversy centres on an edited clip in the documentary that appeared to show Trump urging his supporters to “fight like hell” immediately after telling them to “walk down to the Capitol”, suggesting he had directly incited the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot.

However, the original footage shows that Trump made the “fight like hell” comment nearly an hour later and in a different context, after calling on supporters to cheer on “our brave senators and congressmen and women”.

The row deepened following the leak of an internal memo by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the BBC’s standards committee. The memo criticised producers for misrepresenting Trump’s remarks and further alleged that the broadcaster had suppressed reporting critical of transgender issues and displayed anti-Israel bias within its Arabic service.

In the wake of the scandal, BBC director-general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness resigned on Sunday. Trump hailed their departures on his Truth Social platform, calling them “corrupt” and “very dishonest people”.

BBC chair Samir Shah on Monday acknowledged that the edited clip was “misleading” and apologised for what he described as an “error of judgement”. However, he rejected claims of institutional bias, stating that the leaked memo did not reflect “a full picture of the discussions, decisions and actions that were taken” within the standards board.

Trump’s legal threat marks the latest in a series of aggressive actions against media outlets critical of him. In recent months, he has launched defamation suits against The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and ABC News, while also pursuing funding cuts for NPR and PBS and barring Associated Press reporters from the White House press pool.

The BBC has yet to confirm whether it intends to comply with Trump’s demands or contest the claims in court.

With agency inputs