The BBC is reportedly “likely to resist” Donald Trump’s threat of a $1bn lawsuit after receiving legal advice.
On Monday, the US president threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn in damages over an edit of his January 6 speech in a Panorama programme.
The sequence appeared in the BBC documentary Trump: A Second Chance?, which aired the week before last year’s US election.
A leaked 19-page memo on impartiality by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, ruled the broadcaster gave the impression that he told supporters he would march with them to the US Capitol to “fight like hell.”
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The controversy prompted the resignations of director general Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness.
Following this, Trump threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn in damages if the corporation doesn’t issue a full apology and retraction of the programme. He has given the corporation until Friday evening to apologise and “appropriately compensate” him.
However, it seems like the BBC is ready to resist Trump’s legal threat, according to ITV’s political editor Robert Peston.
In a post on X, Peston said the BBC has received legal advice that Trump was not “meaningfully damaged” by the Panorama edit, and that “therefore there is no legal necessity to pay him compensation.”
He added: “The BBC board is therefore likely to resist and fight his demand to be “appropriately compensated” out of court, and will risk him carrying through on his threat to seek $1bn in damages by going to court.”
Trump has a habit of suing broadcasters and corporations that he disagrees with, and has previously managed to secure significant settlements from US news organisations in America.
But he also has a long record of unsuccessful suits and his threats of legal action often prove to be empty attempts to scare and bully opponents.
In the legal letter to the BBC, Trump demanded a a full and fair retraction of the documentary and any and all other false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements about President Trump in as conspicuous a manner as they were originally published,” an immediate apology and compensation.