The BBC, Britain’s publicly-funded TV and radio broadcaster, launched a bid to have a Florida court dismiss a $10 billion lawsuit President Donald Trump is bringing over edits to a speech he gave ahead of the Jan. 6 riots in Washington, D.C. in 2021. File Photo by Andy Rain/EPA
Jan. 13 (UPI) — The BBC said Tuesday that it will attempt to have U.S. President Donald Trump‘s lawsuit seeking $10 billion over a misleading documentary on the Jan. 6 riots tossed from a court in Florida.
Trump is suing for $5 billion in damages for alleged defamation plus $5 billion for an alleged state trade law violation, but the motion the British public broadcaster is set to file will argue the court has no jurisdiction over the BBC, is an “improper venue” and that Trump had “failed to state a claim [for defamation],” according to court papers.
The corporation asked for all pre-trial proceedings, including discovery, to be halted pending a ruling on the motion.
The BBC previously apologized and issued a retraction over edits to a speech Trump gave to supporters before the storming of the U.S. Capitol, which made it appear, wrongly, as if he was “making a direct call to violent action,” but which the corporation insists was an unintentional error of judgment.
The legal standard for defamation is deliberate or reckless publishing of a falsehood causing reputational harm, but the BBC insists it is not liable because Trump suffered no actual damage, pointing to his decisive victory in the 2024 election, including in Florida.
The BBC will argue there was no “actual malice” in its Oct. 28, 2024, broadcasting of the Panorama program, which it says aired in the United Kingdom only and was not available to view in the United States via the corporation’s Britbox streaming service, as alleged in Trump’s suit.
The program, titled Trump: A Second Chance, broadcast on Oct. 28, 2024, spliced together excerpts lifted from different parts of Trump’s speech that made them appear contiguous: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
What he actually said was, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” and it wasn’t until 50 minutes later in the speech that Trump made the comments about fighting.
The BBC will argue that the rest of the documentary gave a fair and balanced account of Trump’s 2024 race, including giving his supporters ample time to air their views, and that the speech in question comprised just 15 seconds of a 60-minute-long program.
The BBC declined to comment.
“As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case. We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings,” said a spokesman.
The error went unnoticed for a year until The Telegraph ran an exclusive on a leaked BBC memo in which a former ethics adviser raised a red flag over the speech part of the documentary.
The revelations triggered the resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness on Nov. 9.
Trump filed his lawsuit five weeks later on Dec. 15.
