Trump’s $10 Billion Defamation Lawsuit Against BBC Can Proceed, Judge Rules

A judge has rejected the BBC’s application to dismiss a $10 billion defamation lawsuit brought by U.S. President Donald Trump over its editing of a speech that made it appear that he encouraged violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Lawyers acting for Britain’s publicly owned broadcaster had asked the judge to dismiss the claim, but the case is now set for a two-week hearing, beginning Feb. 15, 2027, at a Miami courthouse.

The lawsuit was filed in December, after a Panorama episode broadcast in 2024 came under scrutiny—initially through a leaked internal report—for creating the impression that Trump had encouraged violence among his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Clips from different parts of the president’s speech were spliced together to make it appear he told his supporters, who had gathered in Washington to show they did not accept the results of the 2020 presidential election: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”

The Panorama program, broadcast in the UK on Oct. 28, 2024, one week before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, omitted a lengthy section of Trump’s speech in which he called for peaceful protest.

The lawsuit alleges the BBC defamed Trump and violated a Florida law that bars deceptive and unfair trade practices. The president is seeking at least $5 billion in damages for each of the two separate counts in the lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Roy Altman denied the broadcaster’s application to stay the discovery phase of the lawsuit, when each party can obtain evidence from the other, documents released on Feb. 12. reveal.

The judge said the BBC’s application was premature and had failed to demonstrate that the broadcaster would be prejudiced if the stay was not granted.