(MENAFN) The outgoing director general of the BBC expressed being “very, very proud” of the network’s journalists, just a day after US President Donald Trump threatened to sue the broadcaster for $1 billion.

Speaking to reporters outside BBC headquarters in London on Tuesday morning, Tim Davie said: “I’m here to lead and support the BBC. I’m very, very proud of our journalists in this building. The BBC is going to be thriving and I support everyone on the team. I want to thank every one of them. They’re doing a wonderful job.”

The remarks came as Davie and the BBC’s head of news, Deborah Turness, announced their resignations on Sunday. Their departures followed days of scrutiny over a leaked memo authored by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the broadcaster.

The memo claimed, among other issues, that a 2024 documentary had misleadingly edited a speech by Trump.

On Monday, BBC Chair Samir Shah publicly apologized for the program’s “error of judgement,” acknowledging that splicing parts of Trump’s speech together “did give the impression of a direct call for violent action” regarding the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

Trump’s legal team has formally demanded an apology and “appropriate compensation,” giving the BBC until Friday to respond. The former president has a history of aggressively pursuing litigation against media outlets, including CBS and ABC, both of which paid him millions in settlements.

Meanwhile, Nigel Huddleston, the Conservatives’ shadow culture secretary, argued the broadcaster should make a formal apology.

Speaking to media, Huddleston said: “Well, with a big apology and grovel because they were wrong, and Donald Trump has a perfectly legitimate concern here. It wasn’t ‘could be perceived’ to be misleading, it transparently was.”

Echoing Prescott’s memo, Huddleston added that the editing error was not the only issue in the documentary covering Trump.

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