Trump threatens to sue BBC News after edited video portrayed him encouraging 2021 Capitol Hill rioters 

Ebun Emmanuel — November 10, 2025

BBC News said on Monday that the broadcaster had received a letter from U.S. President Donald Trump threatening legal action over the edit of a documentary broadcast a week before the U.S. presidential election.

The BBC has acknowledged that the Trump speech edit gave a misleading impression and should have been handled more carefully.

The documentary broadcast last year had spliced together two parts of a Trump speech so he appeared to be encouraging the Capitol Hill riot of January 2021.

Recall that the Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) resigned on Sunday after a row over the editing of a speech made by US President Donald Trump on the day of the 2021 attack on the United States Capitol.

The resignation of Tim Davie was followed by that of the head of news Deborah Turness, capping a turbulent week of accusations that the broadcaster edited a speech Trump made on January 6, 2021, to make it appear as if he encouraged the riots that followed his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

Davie said he took “the ultimate responsibility” for mistakes made, saying that quitting his role at the helm of the public broadcaster after five years was “entirely my decision”.

“I have been reflecting on the very intense personal and professional demands of managing this role over many years in these febrile times, combined with the fact that I want to give a successor time to help shape the charter plans they will be delivering,” he said.

A documentary by flagship programme Panorama aired a week before last year’s US election, splicing together clips of Trump’s speech uttered at different points.

The edit made it seem as if Trump said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”

Critics said it was misleading as it cut out a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

The story broke last Tuesday when The Daily Telegraph cited a memo complied by Michael Prescott, a former member of the BBC’s editorial standards committee, which raised concerns over the Trump edit, as well as criticising perceived anti-Israel bias in the BBC’s Arabic service.