Washington/London, November 15, 2025: US President Donald Trump said on Friday he intends to file a lawsuit against the BBC as early as next week, seeking as much as $5 billion in damages after the British broadcaster admitted it wrongly edited a video of a speech he delivered on January 6, 2021. The BBC has acknowledged an “error of judgement” but insists there is no legal basis for Trump’s defamation claim.
The controversy has plunged the British Broadcasting Corporation into its most serious crisis in decades, triggering the resignations of Director General Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness amid mounting accusations of political bias and flawed editorial practices.
Trump’s legal team had given the BBC until Friday to retract its Panorama documentary or face litigation seeking “no less than” $1 billion. They also demanded an apology and compensation for what they described as “overwhelming reputational and financial harm,” according to a letter seen by Reuters.
The BBC issued a personal apology to the president on Thursday but declined to rebroadcast the documentary or accept responsibility for defamation.
Speaking aboard Air Force One en route to Florida, Trump told reporters: “We’ll sue them for anywhere between $1 billion and $5 billion, probably sometime next week. I think I have to do that — they’ve even admitted that they cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”
He said he had not yet spoken to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer about the matter but planned to call him over the weekend, adding that Starmer was “very embarrassed” by the scandal.
The Panorama documentary at the heart of the dispute stitched together three clips of Trump’s speech, creating what his lawyers say was a misleading impression that he incited the Capitol riot. Trump described the edit as “impossible to believe” and likened the act to “election interference” during an interview with GB News.
“I made a beautiful statement, and they made it into a not-beautiful statement,” he said. “Fake news was a great term, except it’s not strong enough. This is beyond fake — this is corrupt.”
The president rejected the BBC’s apology, arguing that an unintentional error would not have required one.
BBC Chair Samir Shah sent a personal apology to the White House on Thursday, calling the editing mistake “an error of judgement.” UK Culture Minister Lisa Nandy said the apology was “right and necessary.”
The BBC said it does not intend to rebroadcast the documentary and is examining new complaints about editing practices on another programme, Newsnight.
The scandal has intensified political scrutiny of the publicly funded broadcaster. Addressing parliament on Wednesday, Prime Minister Starmer reiterated his support for a “strong and independent BBC” but said the organisation must “get its house in order.”
“Some would rather the BBC didn’t exist… I’m not one of them,” Starmer said. “In an age of disinformation, the argument for an impartial British news service is stronger than ever.”
The BBC, founded in 1922 and funded primarily through a compulsory licence fee, now faces questions about whether public money could be used to settle the president’s potential lawsuit. Former media minister John Whittingdale warned there would be “real anger” if licence fee payers ultimately bore the cost of any damages.
