Judge allows Trump's $10bn BBC defamation lawsuit to proceed

A United States federal judge has ruled that President Donald Trump's $10bn defamation lawsuit against the BBC can move forward, rejecting part of the broadcaster's bid to have the case dismissed.

Jeffrey T Kuntz, a Trump-appointed district judge in the Southern District of Florida, issued a 40-page ruling on Tuesday finding that Trump's allegations were credible enough to proceed, though it does not confirm whether he has actually proven them.

The lawsuit accuses the BBC of deceptively editing a documentary about the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot in a way that damaged Trump's reputation, alleging the broadcaster acted with malice. The judge found it plausible that the BBC caused reputational harm and either knew or should have known the edited footage was misleading.

The case concerns an October 2024 BBC documentary titled Trump: A Second Chance?, which included footage from a speech Trump gave to supporters on January 6, 2021, before they stormed the US Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden's election win.

Trump claims the documentary wrongly spliced together two portions of the same speech delivered nearly 55 minutes apart, altering the sequence to make it appear he was directly urging violence. The edited segments combined a part where he told supporters to march to the Capitol with another in which he urged them to fight hard.