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US President Donald Trump has said he plans to take legal action against the BBC over the way his January 6, 2021, speech was edited in a Panorama programme, after the broadcaster apologised but declined to offer financial compensation.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump said he intended to file a lawsuit seeking “between $1bn and $5bn”, and suggested legal action could be initiated as early as next week.
The statement followed the BBC’s public admission on Thursday that the edit of Trump’s 2021 speech had unintentionally created “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”. The broadcaster said the sequence used excerpts from different parts of the speech but appeared to show them as a single continuous segment.
In its statement, the BBC said the programme would not be broadcast again in its current form and apologised to the president, while also rejecting the need for compensation. “The BBC strongly disagreed that there is a basis for a defamation claim,” the corporation said.
Trump repeated on Friday that he plans to move forward with legal action, saying the edited broadcast was misleading and had caused reputational damage.