BBC apologises to Donald Trump hours before US President’s deadline for $1billion lawsuit

The BBC has apologised to Donald Trump hours before a deadline the US President imposed on them.

The furore erupted after the US President’s speech which appeared on Panorama which was edited to appear as if he was explicitly urging people to attack the Capitol on January 6 2021.

The broadcaster told Trump it was an ‘error of judgement’ and the programme will ‘not be broadcast again in this form on any BBC platforms’.

Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for a billion dollars if they don’t apologise and compensate him.

The US President has given the BBC a deadline of Friday to retract ‘false’ and ‘defamatory’ statements made about him.

A BBC spokesperson said chairman Samir Shah has sent a personal letter to the White House to apologise for the editing of the speech in the Panorama programme, but added: ‘While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim.’

Trump threatened legal action after a report from Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Standards Committee.

The spliced clip implied that Trump told the crowd: ‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.’

The words broadcast were spoken by Trump almost an hour apart.

The edit of the speech played in the Panorama episode has recently attracted heavy criticism, with Mr Trump announcing his ‘obligation’ to launch a billion-dollar lawsuit against the BBC, and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer saying the corporation needed to ‘get their house in order’.

The scandal, for which the BBC has apologised, has also led to high-profile resignations, with BBC director-general Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness quitting on Sunday.

The episode, Trump: A Second Chance? has been taken down from the BBC website and a retraction was published on the webpage on Thursday evening.

It said: ‘This programme was reviewed after criticism of how President Donald Trump’s 6th January 2021 speech was edited.

‘During that sequence, we showed excerpts taken from different parts of the speech.

‘However, we accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.

‘The BBC would like to apologise to President Trump for that error of judgement.

‘This programme was not scheduled to be re-broadcast and will not be broadcast again in this form on any BBC platforms.’

Robert Spritzer, an American political scientist and author, told Metro that the statute of limitations for when such a $1billion suit could be filed in Britain has passed.

This means that if this suit goes forward, it would likely be filed in an American court, where the statute of limitations doesn’t apply.

Spritzer argues that the key to understanding Trump is realising litigation is one of his chief weapons that he’s used for decades.

‘He utilised it in thousands of cases while he was a businessman and before he entered politics.

‘And the point is not necessarily to win lawsuits. In Trump’s case, it is less about winning than it is generating publicity that he views as favourable to himself, to harass whoever it is that he is suing, to ratchet up the anxiety for the individuals or organisations that he is suing.’

Spritzer says lawsuits of this calibre could be considered a SLAPP lawsuit – a lawsuit to essentially harass, to provide bad publicity. And Trump has had some success with lawsuits against American media organisations. 

Melania Trump’s lawyers have also threatened to sue author Michael Wolff for $1billion.