President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the BBC for defamation just received a green light from a federal judge to go forward to trial. Judge Jeffrey Kuntz (S.D. Fla.) ruled in Trump v. BBC that the media outlet must stand trial for splicing together lines from Trump’s January 6th speech to make it seem more violence-inducing before the riot at the Capitol. Judge Kuntz, however, rejected a claim under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. The biggest challenge for the court may be whether it can seat jurors who can overcome the case’s underlying political elements.

Judge Kuntz, a Trump nominee, notes prior cases brought by the President that federal courts dismissed as not actionable. See Trump v. CNN (S.D. Fla. 2023), aff’d (11th Cir. 2025); Trump v. Dow Jones & Co., Inc. (S.D. Fla. 2026). As a torts professor, I was critical of some past filings by the President that pursued overbroad or flawed defamation claims.

BBC was different. It involved an act that is anathema to ethical journalists — cutting lines from different parts of a tape and then joining them as if they were stated together. Even BBC’s own journalists admitted that what they did in the segment violated the most basic ethical standards taught in journalism schools.

The case stems from a documentary denounced as a BBC “hit piece” that aired just a week before the 2024 election, on October 28, 2024. Titled “Trump: A Second Chance,” BBC showed a twelve-second segment from Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech:

We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.

Those two lines actually were stated fifty-five minutes apart. Moreover, Trump also expressly told his followers to go to the Hill “peacefully” to let their voices be heard — words routinely edited out by many in the media and, most notoriously, by the Democratic J6 Committee,

However, the BBC effectively created a new statement by splicing together two lines. What was actually said was very different from what aired. First, Trump declared:

Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down. Anyone you want but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

Fifty-five minutes later, Trump stated:

[B]ut I said ‘Something’s wrong here, Something’s really wrong, can’t have happened.’ And we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.

Notably, less than a minute later, Trump told his supporters to remain peaceful:

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard[.]

Judge Jeffrey Kuntz found that the BBC not only recognized its violation of journalistic ethics but actively sought to guarantee that the misleading segment would be heard before the election in states such as Florida.

This decision is notable because Trump must meet a higher standard under Supreme Court precedent. Under New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court crafted the actual malice standard that required public officials to shoulder the higher burden of proving defamation. Under that standard, an official would have to show either actual knowledge of its falsity or a reckless disregard of the truth. That standard was later extended to public figures.

The court found sufficient evidence of actual malice at BBC:

“For purposes of the defamation test, ill-will is different from actual malice. An intention to portray a public figure in a negative light, even when motivated by ill-will or evil intent, is not sufficient to show actual malice unless the publisher intended to inflict harm through knowing or reckless falsehood. However, ill-will or motive, when combined with other evidence, may be taken into account for actual malice….

Here, Trump alleges that BBC has a history of unfair or improper coverage toward him. In addition to the Documentary itself, Trump highlights the Prescott Memorandum, a 2022 BBC Newsnight episode, and the “2024 BBC News Shooting Hoax.” As an important reminder, the state of mind required for actual malice must be “brought home” to the person in the BBC’s organization responsible for the publication of the Documentary. This principle is relevant as it relates to the 2022 Newsnight episode and the 2024 “Shooting Hoax.” Again, Trump has not alleged that either of these incidents involved the creator(s) of the Documentary. That said, these incidents are not merely portrayal in a negative light, but examples of BBC playing fast and loose with the factual accuracy of their media content. With respect to the Newsnight episode, the BBC seemingly did not care about the falsity of the portrayal until the later Documentary became an issue. Such examples can be said to be probative of BBC’s state of mind as it pertains to recklessness in light of BBC’s non-action toward false statements about Trump.

Thus, Trump paints a picture that demonstrates the BBC has a record of allowing the publication of false statements in their portrayal of Trump. BBC asks the Court to put on blinders and treat the Panorama team as if they were blocked off from the rest of the organization, ignorant of everything else going on at BBC. At this procedural stage [i.e., a motion to dismiss, where plaintiff must merely plausibly allege facts that could lead to liability, rather than proving them -EV], the Court simply cannot ignore the circumstantial evidence presented. To do so would make it extremely difficult to ever prove a defendant’s subjective state of mind in any defamation case….

Trump alleged that BBC’s editing of the speech was an “intentional and malicious effort to falsely and deceptively portray President Trump as having called for violence.” In support, Trump alleges that it “would have been impossible for BBC’s journalists and producers to splice together two distinct parts of the [s]peech from nearly fifty-five minutes apart unless they were acting intentionally.” On its face, the editing may independently establish the plausibility of actual malice. 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.

Editing is often required. 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. BBC also had the entire speech available to them for nearly three years by the time of the Documentary.”

Judge Kuntz adds an interesting twist to the record. The BBC Chairman previously issued an apology:

“The way the speech was edited in the documentary gave a misleading impression of what you said. The editing unintentionally created the impression of a single continuous section of your speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech. This gave the mistaken impression that you had made a direct call for violent action. That was an editorial error and it should not have happened.”

However, the court notes that “BBC now appears to disagree with the apology issued by the Chairman:

“BBC’s Chairman admitted that the documentary gave a misleading and mistaken impression that Trump made a direct call for violent action. Strangely enough, BBC strays from that position in the Motion to Dismiss, referring to statements made by January 6 defendants as evidence that the speech may be interpreted as a call to violent action. But BBC’s own Chairman acknowledged the editing was misleading in his letter to Trump….”

The court also notes:

“BBC then argues that allegations that BBC omitted portions of Trump’s speech are also insufficient to establish actual malice. Alterations of quotes that “materially alter” the meaning of Trump’s statements could support a finding of actual malice…. 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. To the extent that there was no material alteration to the meaning of Trump’s speech, that simply cannot be the case. The Chairman’s letter makes it very clear that BBC acknowledges there was a material change of meaning when they edited the speech to create a single continuous segment that did not exist.

BBC then argues that the apology “militates against a finding of actual malice.” … Today, retractions can be issued near instantaneously for online publications thanks to the internet. The Court acknowledges that media entities, like The Washington Post, or BBC, are not perfect, and make mistakes. However, it cannot be said that a retraction the next day is in the same ballpark as a retraction over a year later, and only after being threatened with legal action. The temporal distance here makes the retraction a weak indicator as to BBC’s state of mind at the time of publication.

Further weakening BBC’s argument, BBC was aware that such editing created a false impression as early as 2022. Former Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, in relation to the 2022 Newsnight episode, stated on-air: “Your video actually spliced together the presentation.… [Y]our video makes it look like those two things came together.” As BBC’s own Clive Coleman stated “[t]he first lesson … you’re taught as a broadcast journalist is that you do not joint two bits of footage together from different times in a way that will make the audience think that it is one piece of footage.” Considering these facts, BBC’s ultimate retraction in 2025 reads less like a readiness to retract, and more like a reluctance to retract.”

While the Court acknowledges that some of the evidence from decisions made after the segment aired might not directly bear on the state of mind at the time of publication, it finds that “Trump’s allegations regarding BBC’s departure from journalistic standards are more than enough to plausibly alleged more than mere negligence.” The key question is whether Trump is allowed a trial to prove such allegations:

“Of course, all of this does not prove BBC acted with actual malice. But it does make it plausible. And Trump need only allege facts sufficient to give rise to a reasonable inference that the BBC edited and published the Documentary ‘with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.’ Trump has done so here…”

It is a comprehensive and informative opinion. While I have criticized some past lawsuits, I believe the court is right to set this case for trial.

Jonathan Turley is the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.” He teaches torts and defamation. For full disclosure, Turley previously worked as the BBC’s legal analyst.

Here is the opinion: Trump v. BBC