A judge has allowed President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the BBC to proceed. The case is scheduled to go to trial in February 2027.
A BBC spokesman said of the development, “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case.”
The judge’s decision to allow the lawsuit to proceed follows the BBC filing a motion to stay discovery. The network still plans to file a motion to dismiss the case by March 17.
According to the network’s January 12 motion, the defamation case “arises out of a documentary that Defendants the British Broadcasting Corporation (‘the BBC’), BBC Studios Distribution Ltd., and BBC Studios Productions Ltd. did not create in Florida, produce in Florida, or air in Florida.”
“As Defendants will set forth in their dispositive Motion to Dismiss, this Court lacks personal jurisdiction over them and Plaintiff fails to state claims for defamation or violations of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (‘FDUPTA’),” the filing added, calling for the court to “stay merits-based discovery until a reasonable period of limited jurisdictional discovery has concluded and the Court has resolved the threshold question of personal jurisdiction.”
President Trump accused the BBC in December of making a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction” of him that was “fabricated and aired by the Defendants one week before the 2024 Presidential Election in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome” to his detriment.
Doctoring Trump’s speech, “in the form of distortion of meaning and splicing of entirely unrelated word sequence,” the lawsuit says, “is part of the BBC’s longstanding pattern of manipulating President Trump’s speeches and presenting content in a misleading manner in order to defame him, including fabricating calls for violence that he never made.”
The lawsuit centers on a Panorama program called “Trump: A Second Chance,” which was broadcast a week before the 2024 election and showcased a doctored video of Trump saying, “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you, and we fight. We fight like [removed], and if you don’t fight like [removed], you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
