The legal threat came in a letter from Alejandro Brito, one of Trump’s lawyers, to the BBC that was obtained by The New York Times. The letter demanded a full retraction of the documentary, an apology and what his lawyers said would be payments that “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused.”
The letter said that if those demands were not met, “President Trump will be left with no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights, all of which are expressly reserved and are not waived, including by filing legal action for no less than $1,000,000,000 (One Billion Dollars) in damages.”
The letter said: “The BBC is on notice” and concluded: “PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY.”
The BBC said on its website that it had received a letter threatening legal action and that it would “respond in due course.” The documentary, called “Trump: A Second Chance?” and broadcast before the presidential election last year, had already been removed from the BBC’s online player.
Samir Shah, the BBC’s chair, said in a separate letter Monday that complaints about the editing of the clip had been discussed by the standards committee in January and May, and that the points raised in the review had been relayed to the BBC team that produced the documentary, part of a long-running current affairs series called “Panorama.””With hindsight, it would have been better to take more formal action,” he wrote. He added: “We accept that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action. The BBC would like to apologize for that error of judgment.”The head of the BBC, Tim Davie, and the head of news, Deborah Turness, resigned Sunday after growing pressure over the editing of the documentary.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.