Trump says his lawsuit against the BBC is imminent

President Trump on Monday said that he will soon file a lawsuit against the BBC over the way the new organization deceptively edited remarks he made in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“Even the media can’t believe that one,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House. “They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with January 6 that I didn’t say, and the beautiful words that I said, the beautiful words talking about patriotism and all of the good things I said.”

The president said last month he would sue the BBC for $5 billion, though he did not put a dollar amount on the lawsuit Monday.

A BBC documentary released last year included a misleading edit of the comments Mr. Trump made during his Jan. 6 rally, protesting the 2020 presidential election results. The documentary, “Trump: A Second Chance?” omitted Mr. Trump urging his supporters to protest “peacefully.”

Instead, they spliced together two separate comments he made nearly an hour apart to create the impression he was calling for violence.

The documentary falsely shows Mr. Trump saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And I’ll be there with you. And we fight – we fight like hell.”

In reality, Mr. Trump said, “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol. And we’re gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. He did not call on supporters to “fight like hell” for election integrity until an hour after his remarks about walking to the Capitol.

Mr. Trump said Monday that BBC News “had me saying things that I never said. … So we’ll be bringing a lawsuit.”

The edit has led to the resignations of BBC News CEO Deborah Turness and BBC Director-General Tim Davie.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is also looking into the matter.

Mr. Trump’s legal team had demanded a full retraction, an apology and financial compensation. The BBC did issue an apology saying it had “no plans’ to re-air the documentary, but stopped short of fulfilling Mr. Trump’s demands.

The BBC has insisted that there is no basis for Mr. Trump’s defamation allegation.

“There is a lot being written, said and speculated upon about the possibility of legal action, including potential costs or settlements. 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. I want to be very clear with you — our position has not changed,” BBC Chair Samir Shah recently wrote in a memo to staffers.

Mr. Trump has won a string of legal victories over media companies for their coverage of him and his campaign. He has scored multimillion-dollar settlements from CBS, ABC and Meta.

In July, Paramount Global and CBS agreed to pay $16 million to settle Mr. Trump’s lawsuit over how the network selectively edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump’s legal team argued that the network’s use of edited clips constituted election interference.

That legal victory came shortly after ABC apologized and paid $15 million to settle Mr. Trump’s defamation case over anchor George Stephanopoulos falsely saying the president had been held “liable for rape.” The jury in the E. Jean Carroll case, to which Mr. Stephenopoulos was referring to actually concluded Mr. Trump was liable for “sex abuse.”

Mr. Trump has also won a combined $60 million in settlements from X, Meta and YouTube this year over the suspension of his accounts in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot.