Donald Trump Threatens Legal Action Against BBC Over January 6 Edit

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 received and a spokeswoman said: “We will review the letter and respond directly in due course.”

Trump yesterday accused BBC journalists of being “corrupt” over the “doctored” speech, which came in a 2024 Panorama film about the January 6 2021 Capitol riots. 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 alongside various issues with news coverage raised by the excoriating Prescott memo, which was just published by the BBC in full. 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 beyond the BBC’s confirmation but the POTUS has of course been highly litigious in the U.S. media space 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. Similarly, he settled with ABC for $15M over remarks that This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos made during an interview with Nancy Mace. Both incidences have led to free press concerns in the States.