Federal Judge Lets Trump’s BBC Defamation Case Continue, Dismissing Jurisdictional Defense

A federal judge on Tuesday declined to dismiss Donald Trump’s defamation claim against the BBC over edits made to a documentary about January 6 that aired before the 2024 election.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Kuntz rejected the BBC’s effort to have the case dismissed, ruling that Trump had not established personal jurisdiction. The judge noted that the Panorama documentary did not air in Florida, where the case was filed.

In his ruling, Kuntz wrote that the BBC had acknowledged that it “edited a video to make it appear as though President Trump made a statement he never made” and that it “chose to release the video in a documentary only a week before the 2024 Presidential Election, at the time it would have the most impact.” The judge added that the BBC “even emailed U.S. and Florida based commenters with instructions on how to view the documentary” in an effort to ensure it reached audiences in Florida.

Kuntz added, “Whether President Trump can prove these claims and establish he sustained damages at summary judgment or trial is left for another day.”

The judge allowed Trump’s defamation claim to proceed but dismissed his claim alleging a violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. Trump sued the BBC for $10 billion.

In the documentary, Trump: A Second Chance?, a clip was shown from Trump’s January 6 speech, in which he said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.” The court noted that the remark came from an edit of different portions of the speech.

Trump alleged that the documentary, produced by October Films, was streamed on iPlayer by “hundreds of individuals” using a VPN in the U.S. despite being geoblocked in America. His lawyers accused the BBC of a “brazen” attempt to interfere in the 2024 U.S. election, a claim the BBC has denied.

In the aftermath of the edited speech, BBC Director General Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, who led the news division, stepped down. The BBC apologized, calling it an “error of judgment,” but did not offer to pay damages.

The judge wrote that Trump “properly alleged that BBC spliced and edited together a twelve-second segment that resulted in reputational harm based off ‘deceptive and defamatory distortion.’”

“On its face, a twelve-second clip seems insignificant,” the judge wrote, “but in the context of the complaint, these twelve seconds are the result of splicing two segments that are separated by nearly fifty-five minutes in the speech from which the segment is sourced.”

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