Donald Trump to sue BBC for up to $5 billion over misleading edit
BBC chair Samir Shah issued a stern message that the broadcaster is “determined to fight” Donald Trump who threatened to sue for $5 billion after a ‘fake’ edit of his speeches.
BBC chair Samir Shah has issued a stern message that the broadcaster is “determined to fight” the defamation action taken by US President Donald Trump.
On Monday (Tuesday AEDT) Mr Shah sent an email to the broadcaster’s staff - obtained by Sky News UK - and said: “I want to be very clear with you - our position has not changed.
“There is no basis for a defamation case and we are determined to fight this”.
His remarks come after President Trump said on the weekend he would sue for up to $US5bn ($A7.6bn).
“There is a lot being written, said and speculated upon about the possibility of legal action, including potential costs or settlements,” he wrote in the email.
“In all this we are, of course, acutely aware of the privilege of our funding and the need to protect our licence fee payers, the British public”.
The US President said on the weekend despite receiving an apology from the publicly-funded British broadcaster, he would continue with suing for damages over a misleading edit of one of his speeches.
“We’ll sue them for anywhere between a billion and five billion dollars, probably some time next week. I think I have to do it. They’ve even admitted that they cheated,” Mr Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
MrTrump’s lawyers sent the BBC a letter accusing it of defaming the president with the video of the speech before the 2021 US Capitol riot and giving it until Friday (Saturday AEDT) to apologise and pay compensation.
It was later found to have spliced together Mr Trump’s speech on the day of the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, 2021 that his lawyers this week said had, “false, defamatory, disparaging and inflammatory statements”.
The BBC apologised to President Trump on Thursday night (Friday AEDT) but did not offer any compensation payments.
With legal action taken by Mr Trump against the BBC, media lawyer Mark Stephens from UK law firm Howard Kennedy, told this masthead the US leader’s bid to sue the BBC has been flawed from the beginning.
“To win such a case you need more than bombast and bluster, you need evidence and legal merit,” he said.
“The problems his lawyers have are multifarious, he can’t sue in the UK because two weeks ago the time limit for doing so within one year of the program airing expired”.
He also said the program never aired in the US, which is problematic when trying argue that a Panorama program titled ‘Trump: A Second Chance?’ that aired on October 24 last year in the UK diminished his reputation.
The resignation of director general Tim Davie and news boss Deborah Turness has plunged Britain’s biggest media organisation into crisis.
“The people of the UK are very angry about what happened, as you can imagine, because it shows the BBC is fake news,” Mr Trump said.
He added that he planned to raise the BBC issue with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has backed the broadcaster’s independence while avoiding taking sides against Mr Trump.
“I’m going to call him over the weekend. He actually put a call into me. He’s very embarrassed,” Mr Trump said.
The turmoil engulfing the BBC is an “unprecedented” and an “extraordinarily dangerous moment for Britain” as it fights claims of widespread institutional bias, media experts claim.
The UK public broadcaster, nestled in an affluent area of central London between Oxford Street and Regent’s Park, has been dogged by a string of bad headlines in 2025 that eventually cost two of the most senior executives their jobs.
University of Westminster Professor Jean Seaton – who was also the BBC’s historian from 2001 to 2022 – described the turmoil at the BBC as a “very serious crisis”.
“It’s unprecedented and it’s an extraordinarily dangerous moment for Britain,” she told this masthead this week.
“I think it has damaged the BBC and if it has to pay Trump money that would be very damaging.
“The horror of the attack on the BBC is very clear – the BBC has lost its director-general, it’s lost its head of news and it has a chance to fresh itself”.
Despite this she believes chair Samir Shah will survive the latest scandal as the broadcaster tries to move forward from the disaster.
In a publicly-funded model that differs from the ABC, British households are charged an annual licence fee that must be paid – with some exceptions – of £174.50 ($A350).
It allows viewers to watch live TV, record programs and use BBC iPlayer.
Other scandals to engulf the BBC this year includes allowing an Gaza documentary to air – later pulled – that was narrated by the son of an Hamas official and also broadcasting live vision from the Glastonbury music festival of punk rap duo Bob Vylan.
The band repeatedly chanted, “death, death to the IDF” which aired on the BBC and also was available on its iPlayer platform for hours afterwards.
High-profile sports broadcaster Gary Lineker also quit in May after posting on social media an illustration of a rat, commonly used as an antisemitic insult.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy criticised the BBC this week for “facing challenges, some of its own making”.
The BBC’s 11-year charter is up for review in 2027 and Ms Nandy said the government will soon publish a green paper and launch a consultation with the public to help determine the future of the BBC.
She told the House the BBC is “one of the most trusted sources of news in our country” and has been for years accused of bias from both the “left and right”.
“The BBC is not just the broadcaster, it is a national institution that belongs to us all every day,” Ms Nandy said.
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Originally published as Donald Trump to sue BBC for up to $5 billion over misleading edit