Donald Trump has vowed to sue the BBC in a matter of hours after accusing the broadcaster of “putting words in my mouth” in relation to the ongoing doctored Panorama speech scandal. The US president said his libel suit would be fired “probably this afternoon or tomorrow evening”.

He said: “I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth… I guess they used AI or something. They actually put terrible words in my mouth.” The BBC changed a speech the Republican made in an episode of Panorama, prompting him to come after them for a sum “from $1billion to $5billion”.

The broadcaster edited Mr Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, the day of the attack on the US Capitol building. It admitted to “showing excerpts taken from different parts of the speech”.

Panorama reported him as saying: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you and we fight.”

What he actually said was: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

The BBC responded: “This programme was reviewed after criticism of how President Donald Trump‘s 6th January 2021 speech was edited. During that sequence, we showed excerpts taken from different parts of the speech.”

“We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.

“The BBC would like to apologise to President Trump for that error of judgement.”

The scandal prompted the resignation of BBC director Tim Davie and CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness.