Judge Jeffrey T. Kuntz of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Nov. 10 allowed President Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC to proceed.
The judge ruled that Trump had plausibly alleged that the BBC’s editing of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech caused harm to his reputation and was done with knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth.
“Whether President Trump can prove these claims and establish he sustained damages at summary judgment or trial is left for another day,” the judge wrote in the ruling.
Kuntz dismissed Trump’s separate claim under Florida’s unfair trade practices law. He ordered the BBC to answer the defamation claim by Dec. 1.
In a post on Nov. 10 on Truth Social, Trump claimed a “huge victory” against the BBC, citing Kuntz’s ruling.
In his post, Trump quoted Kuntz as writing that the BBC “created the story” by editing a video to make it appear that the president had said something he never said.
Trump called the broadcaster “a terrible abuser of the truth” and vowed to continue challenging news organizations he accuses of misleading Americans.
“We will continue fighting against, and defeating, all of those who try to deceive the American People!” Trump said in his Truth Social post.
The BBC didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
The judge said the core of Trump’s complaint was a 12-second segment of him speaking that was spliced together from two different parts of his speech on Jan. 6.
In the BBC’s clip, Trump says, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you,” then says: “And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
The judge laid out the conversation that BBC’s quote was taken from and noted that the 12-second clip contained comments that were said nearly 55 minutes apart.
BBC’s reporting also omitted a key statement made by Trump less than a minute later, in which the president told his supporters to peacefully walk to the Capitol.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” he said.
The judge said the BBC admits that Trump never made the statements as aired and that the chairman of the BBC apologized to Trump.
Kuntz said the BBC tried to frame the editing as something ordinarily done to condense a 70-minute speech into 12 seconds.
But Kuntz said he was not persuaded.
“Editing is often required,” the judge said. “However, given the time disparity between the two statements, the distance itself tends toward a plausible inference that BBC knew or should have known that the segment they were creating would not and could not have been a truthful statement.”
“This was not trimming around the edges but creating something different than what was stated in the speech,” Kuntz said.
The BBC also had the entire speech available to them for nearly three years by the time of the documentary, according to Kuntz.
