The BBC apologized to Donald Trump on Thursday for a selective edit of his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, but argued the president’s legal threats toward the network don’t rise to the level of a defamation lawsuit.
Trump’s legal team sent the BBC a letter earlier this week demanding it retract any “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” about the president from a 2024 documentary by Friday, or face a $1 billion lawsuit.
In a statement posted by the BBC on Thursday, the network said its chair, Samir Shah, had sent a personal letter to the White House apologizing for the edit and that the network has “no plans” to rebroadcast the program.
“While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim,” an unnamed spokesperson wrote in the statement.
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