US President Donald Trump has said he will take legal action against the BBC next week over how his speech was edited by Panorama, after the corporation apologised but refused to compensate him.
Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Friday evening, Trump said: “We’ll sue them for anywhere between a billion and $5bn probably sometime next week.”
On Friday, the BBC said the edit of the 6 January 2021 speech had unintentionally given “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”.
The BBC apologised but said it would not pay financial compensation.
Trump said he would discuss it with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer over the weekend.
Earlier this week Trump’s lawyers threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn in damages unless the corporation issued a retraction, apologised and compensated him.
Trump’s lawyers had given the BBC a deadline of 22:00 GMT (17:00 EST) on Friday 14 November to respond, which it did.
The controversy led to the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness on Sunday.
Searches of public court record databases earlier showed no legal action had been filed so far.
Federal and state courts in Florida, where a case would likely be filed, are now closed for the weekend.
Based on Pacer searches for federal cases related to the BBC, no case filed by the Trump administration has been filed.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated shortly.
