FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A U.S. federal judge has declined to dismiss President Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation case against the BBC, ruling Trump had plausibly alleged harm to his reputation as a result of the broadcaster’s edit of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech.
Trump shared the ruling in a post on Truth Social, where he declared it “A Huge Victory against Fake News BBC, a terrible abuser of the truth, just handed down by highly respected District Court Judge, Jeffrey T. Kuntz, of the Southern District of Florida.”
“We will continue fighting against, and defeating, all of those who try to deceive the American People!” Trump wrote.
United States District Judge Jeffrey T. Kuntz partially granted and partially denied BBC’s motion to dismiss on Tuesday in the Southern District of Florida. The defamation claim will move forward. The claim under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act was dismissed.
Kuntz was precise about what he had not yet decided. “Whether President Trump can prove these claims and establish he sustained damages at summary judgment or trial is left for another day,” he wrote.
What the judge decided
President Donald J. Trump v. British Broadcasting Corp., No. 1:25-cv-25894 — the case at hand — involves a defamation claim and a claim brought under Florida’s consumer law. BBC had moved the court to dismiss the case on the grounds of lack of personal jurisdiction over BBC and failure to state a claim.
Kuntz rejected both of BBC’s arguments in regard to the defamation claim. First, he ruled that a sentence which Trump had never spoken was a false statement of fact, not protected opinion, and that Trump had “plausibly alleged a comprehensive framework of actual malice” — the standard a public figure must meet, showing a statement was published knowing it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth.
“On its face, the editing may independently establish the plausibility of actual malice,” Kuntz wrote. “BBC tries to frame this editing as ordinary editing done to condense a seventy-minute-long speech into twelve seconds. But the Court is not persuaded.”
Second, Kuntz held that the case could be heard in Florida courts. Notably, the BBC had released the documentary a week before the 2024 election and, in Kuntz’s own words, had “even emailed U.S. and Florida based commenters with instructions to on how to view the documentary.”
As for the claim under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, it was dismissed because the documentary, in Kuntz’s opinion, was not commercial speech, and thus was not covered by the consumer law of Florida. BBC needs to file an answer to the defamation claim by Dec. 1.
The 12-second clip at the center of the dispute
The case arose from the BBC Panorama documentary “Trump: A Second Chance,” which was broadcast on Oct. 28, 2024, one week before the 2024 presidential election.
In a 12-second segment, the program aired 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 and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Trump did not say those words in one sentence. In fact, as it follows from the court’s order, the segment consisted of splicing together two clips of Trump’s Jan. 6 speech taken nearly 55 minutes apart from each other. The missing line was that in which Trump told the crowd they would march to the Capitol “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Kuntz distinguished the present case from the earlier media-related suits filed by Trump, which other judges dismissed. “Those cases involved a news entity reporting on a story. Here, the news entity created the story,” he wrote. “BBC admitted as much by confirming it had edited a video to make it appear as though President Trump made a statement he never made.”
The distance between the two clips mattered to Kuntz. “This was not trimming around the edges but creating something different than what was stated in the speech,” he wrote, adding that BBC had the full speech for nearly three years before airing the documentary.
The BBC’s apology and the aftermath
The edit went unnoticed when it originally aired. The BBC faced a controversy more than a year later as a result of a leaked internal BBC memo which cited the edit as evidence of possible political bias.
BBC Chairman Samir Shah apologized to Trump in a letter the court quoted at length. The edit, Shah wrote, “unintentionally created the impression of a single continuous section of your speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech.” It “gave the mistaken impression that you had made a direct call for violent action. That was an editorial error and it should not have happened.”
Director-General Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, both resigned amidst the criticism. BBC issued an apology to Trump and announced that it would not rebroadcast the documentary, which Virginia Times covered when the apology was issued. However, the broadcaster denied being liable for defamation as a result of the edit.
Trump filed the case in December 2025 in Florida federal court. His complaint accuses the BBC of “intentionally, maliciously and deceptively doctoring” his remarks, according to Reuters.
The BBC responds to the decision
BBC reacted to Tuesday’s order by expressing surprise but announcing that it is going to defend the case further.
“We are surprised by this decision but respect the Court’s authority and note the case will now proceed to the next stage,” a BBC spokesperson said.
“We remain confident in our position and will continue to respond through the proper legal process,” the spokesperson added. “It would be inappropriate to comment further while proceedings are ongoing.”
In its motion, BBC had argued that the case might have a chilling effect on reporting about public figures and that Trump could not prove that the documentary damaged him, citing the fact that Trump won the 2024 presidential election one week after the airing. Kuntz agreed with BBC on one point: failing to seek Trump’s comment before airing the documentary, on its own, does not amount to actual malice.
Separately, a federal magistrate judge ordered Trump in late October to submit to a deposition and to answer questions under oath by Dec. 11. BBC needs to file its answer to the defamation claim first, by Dec. 1.