US president Donald Trump threatens to sue BBC for $1bn over edited documentary

US President Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn (£760m) over edits made to one of his speeches in a Panorama documentary.

Trump threatened to take legal action if the BBC did not make a “full and fair retraction” of the programme by November 14.

The BBC said it will reply in due course.

The Panorama documentary spliced together two separate parts of Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021 speech before the riots at the US Capitol, making it appear as if he was going to walk there with them to “fight like hell”.

Trump’s threat to sue came after BBC director general Tim Davie and the CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness resigned on Sunday.

The joint resignations followed the publication of a leaked internal memo last week by the Telegraph newspaper, which highlighted the Panorama edit.

BBC chair Samir Shah said on Monday the BBC would like to apologise for the edit, which he called an “error of judgement” which gave the impression of a “direct call for violent action”.

The leaked internal BBC memo that first highlighted the Panorama edit was written by a former independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial standards committee, Michael Prescott.

His memo also expressed concerns over the BBC’s Gaza coverage, particularly by BBC Arabic, anti-Trump and anti-Israel bias and one-sided transgender reporting.

The BBC chair said it was “simply not true” the memo had uncovered issues the BBC had “sought to bury” - nor was it correct to suggest the BBC had done nothing to tackle concerns raised in the memo.

Davie is holding a staff call later this morning. On Sunday, he said “some mistakes had been made” and that he had to take “ultimate responsibility”.

Turness yesterday insisted the corporation was not “institutionally biased”.

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