Chairman Samir Shah says the BBC is ready to quash President Donald Trump’s promised billion-dollar lawsuit over a year-old documentary, telling staff on Monday there is “no basis for a defamation case.”
“There is a lot being written, said and speculated upon about the possibility of legal action, including potential costs or settlements,” Shah wrote in an internal memo on Monday, obtained by TheWrap. “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.”
Shah’s comments came days after the BBC tried to appease Trump with an apology and a promise not to air the BBC Panorama documentary “Trump: A Second Chance?” again after it was found to have “completely misled” viewers with an edited version of Trump’s Jan. 6 speech. Shah also wrote a personal letter to the White House to apologize.
“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,” it said in a statement on Thursday.
But the broadcaster would not commit to Trump’s demand that it pay him for allegedly causing “reputational and financial harm.” Trump told reporters on Friday he would still bring the BBC to court, saying he would “sue them for anywhere between $1 billion and $5 billion” sometime this week.
Still, Shah said on Monday that he and the BBC remained unmoored.
“I want to be very clear with you – our position has not changed,” he wrote. “There is no basis for a defamation case and we are determined to fight this.”
