A United States federal judge has allowed President Donald Trump to move forward with a ten billion dollar defamation lawsuit against the BBC. Jeffrey T Kuntz, a district judge in the Southern District of Florida, issued a forty-page ruling on Tuesday rejecting the British broadcaster's motion to dismiss the case.
The civil action alleges that the United Kingdom broadcaster deceptively edited a January sixth documentary and acted with malice to damage the president's reputation. Judge Kuntz ruled that the claim of reputational damage, and the allegation that the broadcaster knew the clip was misleading, was credibly alleged. The decision does not establish whether the president has proven those claims.
The legal dispute centres on an October 2024 documentary titled Trump: A Second Chance? It featured clips of a speech the president made on January 6, 2021, to his supporters. The documentary allegedly directed attendees to storm the US Capitol as lawmakers voted to certify former President Joe Biden's win.
The lawsuit states that the documentary was selectively edited with incorrect sequencing of two separate video and audio clips from the same speech, which occurred nearly fifty-five minutes apart. The footage was altered to make it appear that the speaker was directly calling for violence, according to the court filings.
The curated segments included one section where the speaker told supporters to march on the Capitol, and another where he said, "Fight like hell." The president maintained that he never told supporters to commit violence to prevent the peaceful transition of power, though he has claimed that vote-rigging cost him the 2020 race. He also stated that the edited sections omitted his calls for peaceful protest.
The BBC admitted the edit was misleading and issued an apology to the president on November 13, 2025, a month before the lawsuit was filed. In seeking to dismiss the action, the broadcaster contended that its edits simply condensed a seventy-minute speech, an argument rejected by the judge.
The broadcaster continues to deny that it defamed the president. A BBC spokesperson said after the ruling that the organisation is surprised by the decision but respects the court authority and will continue to respond through the proper legal process.
The president posted on social media on Tuesday calling the ruling a huge victory against fake news. He faces a court-ordered December 11 deadline to testify under oath or risk having the defamation lawsuit thrown out, after skipping a scheduled October deposition for the midterm campaign trail.
The original lawsuit was filed in federal court in Miami in December 2025, seeking a minimum of five billion dollars each for alleged defamation and a violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. The judge threw out the second claim on Tuesday.
The BBC case is one of several private lawsuits the president has filed against media organisations. His attorneys have pursued financial penalties against major publishers, including a ten billion dollar defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and a fifteen billion dollar case against The New York Times and Penguin Random House.
