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US President Donald Trump has said he will carry out his threat to sue the BBC after it “butchered” his January 6 speech in a documentary that led to the exit of the corporation’s two top executives on Sunday.
Talking about the lawsuit for the first time on US TV, Trump said he had “an obligation to do it, because . . . you can’t allow people to do that”. He referred to a successful multimillion-dollar settlement with CBS over an edit in an edition of 60 Minutes earlier this year.
The BBC has until Friday to respond to a legal threat by Trump’s lawyers sent on Sunday seeking $1bn in damages unless the corporation apologises and offers compensation.
BBC chair Samir Shah has already apologised once for the misleading edit of a section of Trump’s speech in a Panorama documentary, but those close to the corporation say he is now considering offering a more direct apology to the president to try to calm the situation.
When asked on Fox News if he would proceed with the BBC lawsuit, Trump said: “I guess I have to, you know why not, because they defrauded the public, and they’ve admitted it.”
He described his speech as a “beautiful speech, which was a very calming speech, and they made it sound radical . . . it was really dishonest”.
Trump has won payouts after threatening lawsuits against CBS and ABC in the past but has lost a number of others, including against CNN. It is not clear if Panorama is available in Florida, where the BBC’s iPlayer is not accessible, or whether there would be easily provable damages from a documentary more than a year old about the US president.
The botched documentary is at the heart of a growing scandal sparked by a leaked letter to the BBC board by former standards adviser Michael Prescott, which outlined a list of concerns over BBC coverage. BBC director-general Tim Davie and head of BBC News Deborah Turness have both resigned.
Downing Street on Tuesday refused to comment on the lawsuit, saying it was a matter for the BBC, but culture secretary Lisa Nandy told MPs in the House of Commons that “the BBC is not just a broadcaster, it is a national institution that belongs to us all”.