BBC Fails to Get Trump’s $10 Billion Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed

Skip to content “This was not trimming around the edges but creating something different than what was stated in the speech,” Judge Jeffrey Kuntz writes November 10, 2026 @ 6:48 PM Donald Trump (Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images) A federal judge rejected the BBC’s bid to dismiss President Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit over edits to a Jan. 6 documentary that aired ahead of the 2024 election. In the ruling, issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Kuntz declared that Trump’s lawsuit outlined a plausible claim for defamation over the editing of comments the president made during his Jan. 6, 2021 speech around the time of the riot at the Capitol. Kuntz highlighted more than once that the BBC had apologized to Trump for splicing together two comments he made at different points during the remarks, making it appear as though he had endorsed violence that day. “On its face, the editing may independently establish the plausibility of actual malice,” Kuntz wrote. “BBC tries to frame this editing as ordinary editing done to condense a seventy-minute-long speech into twelve seconds. But the Court is not persuaded.” While Kuntz acknowledged that “editing is often required,” he noted that “the time disparity between the two statements” and “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,” he continued. “BBC also had the entire speech available to them for nearly three years by the time of the Documentary.” In response to the ruling, a BBC spokesperson told media outlets, “We are surprised by this decision but respect the Court’s authority and note the case will now proceed to the next stage.” More to come…