US President Donald Trump said he would take legal action against the BBC over the way Panorama edited his speech, after the corporation apologized but refused to pay him compensation.
Trump said: "We're going to sue them for between $1 billion and $5 billion, probably sometime next week," Trump told reporters on Air Force One, the BBC reports.
On Thursday, the BBC said that editing of Trump's speech from January 6, 2021, unintentionally created "the false impression that President Trump directly called for violence," and added that the recording would no longer be broadcast.
The corporation apologized to the president but said it would not pay him monetary compensation.
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The BBC issued a statement after Trump's lawyers threatened a $1 billion lawsuit unless the corporation issued a denial, apology and paid him damages.
"I think I have to do it. They cheated. They changed the words that came out of my mouth," Trump told reporters of his plan to take legal action.
He added that he had not spoken to Keir Starmer about it, but that the British Prime Minister had asked him to talk. Trump said he would call him over the weekend.
A search of public court databases confirmed that as of Friday evening, no lawsuit had been filed in either federal or state court in Florida.
In a separate interview recorded on Saturday, before the comments made on Air Force One, Trump said he had an "obligation" to sue the BBC, adding that "if you don't do it, you're not preventing the same thing from happening to others."
He called the editing "scandalous" and "worse than that Kamala thing," referring to the dispute he had with the American media outlet CBS over an interview on the show "60 Minutes" with his 2024 opponent, Kamala Harris.
In July of this year, American media company Paramount Global agreed to pay $16 million to settle a legal dispute over the interview.
The controversy stems from the way Panorama edited Trump's January 6, 2021, speech in a documentary aired in October 2024. During the speech, he told supporters, "We're going to march to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and congresswomen."
More than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said, "And we fight. We fight like the devil."
In the Panorama program, a clip shows him saying: "We're going to the Capitol... and I'll be with you. And we're fighting. We're fighting like the devil."
The controversy over the editing of the speech led to the resignations of BBC Director General Tim Davey and Head of News Deborah Ternes.
In its Corrections and Clarifications section, published on Thursday evening, the BBC said the Panorama programme had been reviewed following criticism of the way the speech was edited.
"We accept that our editing inadvertently created the impression that we were showing one continuous portion of the speech, rather than clips from different parts, which gave the false impression that President Trump was directly calling for violence," the statement said.
BBC lawyers have written to Trump's legal team, a spokesperson for the corporation said this week.
"BBC Chairman Samir Shah has separately sent a personal letter to the White House, clearly telling President Trump that he and the corporation apologize for the montage of the January 6, 2021 speech shown on the program," they added.
They also stated: "While the BBC sincerely regrets the way the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree that there is a basis for a defamation claim."
In a letter to Trump's legal team, the BBC outlined five main arguments why it believes it has no legal responsibility.
First, the BBC did not have the rights to distribute the Panorama episode in the US and did not do so.
The documentary was only available on BBC iPlayer to viewers in the United Kingdom.
Secondly, the BBC claims that the documentary did not harm Trump, as he was re-elected shortly afterwards.
Third, the clip was not made to mislead, but to shorten a long speech, and the editing was not done intentionally.
Fourth, the clip should never have been viewed in isolation — it lasted 12 seconds within an hour-long program that also included many pro-Trump voices.
Ultimately, opinion on matters of public interest and political speech are strongly protected by American defamation laws.
The BBC's apology came hours after the Daily Telegraph uncovered another similar edited clip, broadcast on Newsnight in 2022.
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