US President Donald Trump has appeared to make his move clear in suing the BBC. According to The Guardian, the 79-year-old politician spoke to Fox News and said he feels “an obligation” to sue the broadcaster for editing a section of his speech, which he made in January 2021.The US president has accused the BBC of having “defrauded the public” after the reports of the broadcaster editing his speech in a Panorama documentary last year came to light. Donald Trump claimed to sue the corporation for $1bn (£759m) in damages unless the BBC issues a retraction, apologises and compensates him.“I think I have an obligation to do it, you can’t allow people to do that… I guess I have to. They defrauded the public, and they’ve admitted it. This is within one of our great allies, supposedly our great ally,” Trump said to Fox News.While Donald Trump’s interview with Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle aired on Tuesday, his interview was actually recorded on Monday, according to the BBC News. The politician also defended his speech and said:“That’s a pretty sad event. They actually changed my January 6 speech, which was a beautiful speech, which was a very calming speech, and they made it sound radical. They showed me the results of how they butchered it up. It was very dishonest and the head man quit and a lot of the other people quit.”According to the BBC News, the broadcaster received the letter from Donald Trump's lawyers on Sunday, demanding a "full and fair retraction" of the documentary, an apology, and that the BBC "appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused.” He has also given a deadline of 22:00 GMT (17:00 EST) on Friday to respond.While a spokesperson for the BBC said, "We are reviewing the letter and will respond directly in due course,” the BBC chair, Samir Shah, has reportedly previously apologised for an "error of judgement" over the edition of speech.Is the BBC’s leadership in crisis over Donald Trump's edit?The logo of the BBC is displayed above the entrance of Broadcasting House in London, England (Image via Getty)After the BBC came under fire for splicing together two parts of Trump’s speech in an edition of their flagship Panorama documentary, the head of the UK’s British Broadcasting Corporation, Director-General Tim Davie, and news CEO Deborah Turness resigned from their respective positions in the organisation on Sunday.According to the BBC, the edit, which appeared in a Panorama documentary aired days before the US presidential election in November 2024. However, it only generated significant public scrutiny after the Daily Telegraph published a leaked internal BBC memo last week. The memo noted that a section of the speech by Trump had been edited, suggesting that the president had explicitly encouraged the Capitol riot of January 2021.While the US President actually said in his speech:“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”The Panorama edit spliced two sections of the speech, which were more than 50 minutes. And the US President was shown saying:“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol... and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”While the fallout has led to the BBC's director general and head of news to resign, the duo had pushed back against the critics. In a statement, Tim Davie explained his decision to step down, and said “there have been some mistakes” for which he had to take “ultimate responsibility.”On the other hand, Deborah Turness, who oversaw the news division, said the controversy had “reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC.” She said in her resignation statement:“The buck stops with me.”For the unversed, the British government reportedly does not own the BBC. It is publicly funded but not state-owned. However, a “royal charter,” which established the broadcaster as a public corporation in 1927, guarantees its editorial freedom and independence from government.