Trump threatens to sue BBC over edited speech from 2021

British broadcaster has been asked to retract ‘false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements’

- AP

The US president's attorney has also threatened BBC with legal action for $1 billion in damages.

(REUTERS)

US President Donald Trump has threatened legal action against the BBC over the way a speech he made was edited in a documentary aired by Britain’s national broadcaster.

BBC chairman Samir Shah on Monday apologized for the “error of judgment”, which triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.

Director-general Tim Davie and newschief Deborah Turness quit Sunday over accusations of bias and misleading editing of a speech Trump delivered on 6 January 2021, before a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.

The hour-long documentary—titled Trump: A Second Chance?—was broadcast as part of the BBC's “Panorama’ series days before the 2024 US presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

Shah said the broadcaster accepted “that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action”. A letter from Trump attorney Alejandro Brito demands the BBC “retract the false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements”, apologize and “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused”, or face legal action for $1 billion in damages.

The BBC said it would review the letter “and respond directly in due course”.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Trump had earlier welcomed the resignations of the two BBC executives. He posted a link to a