Donald Trump has threatened the BBC with legal action over the botched edit of his January 6 speech, which has led to the resignations of the director general and head of news.
The BBC confirmed the letter has been recieved and a spokeswoman said: “We will review the letter and respond directly in due course.”
Trump yesterday accused BBC journalists of being “corrupt” following the edit, which came in a 2024 Panorama film about the January 6 2021 Capital riots. In the In the Panorama documentary, Trump appears to say: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you and we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.” But he actually said: “We’re gonna walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re gonna walk down, we’re gonna walk down any one you want but I think right here, we’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and we’re gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen.”
Davie and Turness have resigned after the edit came to light along with various issues made public by the excoriating Prescott memo. BBC Chair Samir Shah has apologized for the “error of judgement” in the past few minutes while Turness has taken the blame but rejected any notion that the corporation’s journalists are institutionally biased.
No more information was available at time of writing over Trump’s legal letter but the POTUS has of course been highly litigious in the U.S. over the past year or so.
He settled with Paramount Global, the owner of BBC partner CBS News, for $16M over the editing of a Kamala Harris interview in 60 Minutes, and similarly settled with ABC for $15M over remarks that This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos made during an interview with Nancy Mace.
