A federal judge in Florida allowed President Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the BBC to continue.
Trump sued the media outlet over a doctored 12-second clip of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech at the U.S. Capitol building. The clip was edited to make it appear as if Trump instructed his supporters to assault the Capitol building.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey T. Kuntz denied the BBC’s motion to dismiss the defamation lawsuit but did throw out Trump’s claim under Florida’s deceptive trade practices law.
The legal action centers on a segment of the Panorama documentary “Trump: A Second Chance,” which aired in October 2024, one week before the presidential election. The segment showed Trump telling his supporters to walk down to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” But it cut out that part where he urges people to protest “peacefully and patriotically.”
🚨 BREAKING: A federal judge just REJECTED the BBC's bid to throw out President Trump's defamation lawsuit over its doctored January 6 speech edit
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 10, 2026
The defamation case is going FORWARD ‼️
Judge Jeffrey Kuntz: "Those cases involved a news entity reporting on a story. Here, the… pic.twitter.com/jx0ZA2qPlg
The BBC spliced together two passages that were spoken almost 55 minutes apart and made it appear that Trump was calling for violence.
Kuntz concluded that the segment created “a sentence that Trump never spoke” — a false statement of fact, not protected opinion. The BBC “did not just alter the quote but created a new quote by splicing two statements together and passing them off as a single continuous sentence,” he wrote.
Kuntz further stated that “on its face, the editing may independently establish the plausibility of actual malice” and that “This was not trimming around the edges but creating something different than what was stated in the speech.”
Regarding the gap between the two passages, he wrote, “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.”
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 10, 2026
The BBC maintains the documentary was never broadcast or licensed in the United States, that it geoblocked U.S. viewing, and that its evidence showed 34 plays by 10 users who circumvented the geoblocks with VPNs. The court treated that dispute as unresolved.
Kuntz dismissed the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act count because the statute reaches only acts in trade or commerce, and a publisher's commercial purposes don’t convert its editorial content into commercial speech.
The judge ordered the BBC to file an answer to the defamation count on or before December 1, 2026. He stressed that his ruling only decides that Trump’s claim is plausible, but does not make any conclusion regarding the BBC’s guilt.
A BBC spokesperson said the broadcaster was surprised by the decision but respects the court's authority and remains confident in its position.
The BBC will have a hard time getting out of this one. This clip was even more deceptive than CNN’s “fine people” hoax, in which it tried to trick the public into thinking Trump complimented neo-Nazis and white nationalists. When one watches the segment, it becomes clear what the BBC was trying to do. But now, it might backfire.
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