Federal Judge to BBC: Get Ready For Trump’s Defamation Trial

Alternate headline: Another Media Outlet Soon to Discover Sudden Interest in Trump Library.

ABC and Disney had to pony up eight figures to Donald Trump’s eventual legacy site after George Stephanopoulos called Trump a rapist. CBS and Paramount had to contribute a similar amount to avoid a trial over Trump’s claim of election interference after 60 Minutes acted like Kamala Harris’ ad agency and edited her video in a vain effort to make her sound coherent. Thus far, the BBC has fought Trump’s efforts to hold them accountable for cooking an edit of Trump’s January 6 speech to falsely impute incitement.

Today, a federal judge told the BBC to put up or shut up:

A U.S. judge said President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC can go to trial in 2027.

Judge Roy K. Altman of the federal court for the Southern District of Florida rejected an attempt by Britain’s national broadcaster to delay proceedings.

He set a February 2027 trial date.

Trump filed a lawsuit in December over the way the BBC edited a speech he gave on Jan. 6, 2021. The claim seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.

More importantly, the judge also denied a request to pause discovery:

The judge on Wednesday also denied the BBC’s request to put the exchange of evidence in the case on hold until he rules on the the new outlet’s motion to dismiss, which is due in March. The judge said the request was premature.

Discovery is what the BBC wants to avoid at all costs. Presumably, they would want to see Trump’s internal communications as well, but the problem with that is that those have already been made public. The January 6 riot has been thoroughly and exhaustively investigated and analyzed in public, not just by the media but also by a House Select Committee and hundreds of trials in which participants were convicted. There isn’t much that the BBC can glean in discovery, but that’s not the case for Trump and his legal team when it comes to the BBC.

That matters in large part because of the grounds on which the BBC has moved separately for dismissal:

The BBC said in a January filing that it will argue in its motion to dismiss the case that that the documentary at the center of the dispute was fair despite a misleading edit of one segment.

The BBC said will also argue that Trump‘s suit fails to meet the high bar necessary for alleging defamation against a public figure. The standard requires a showing of “actual malice,” meaning the allegedly defamatory statement was made intentionally or with a reckless disregard for the truth.

The BBC has a big problem moving for dismissal on this basis before discovery. The edit itself is clearly deliberate and objectively misleading. The BBC produced this more than three years after the event and aired it right before the 2024 election, as the Associated Press notes:

The BBC had broadcast the documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

Given that three years had passed and that this very point had been the subject of much public debate, it’s very difficult to believe that a news organization committed a benign error. The BBC’s subsequent apology for the edits further complicates a motion to dismiss. The BBC used selective edits to publish a clearly false impression of Trump’s speech right before an election. That is a rational basis for a defamation action. 

The BBC wants to hide behind the Sullivan standard for its dismissal, but that’s the problem. Since the BBC published the arguably defamatory segment, Trump is entitled to discovery to see whether evidence of actual malice exists. If the BBC has any documentary evidence that they knew the edits would paint a false picture, they’re going to lose in court, and lose bigly. Trump won’t get $10 billion, but he’ll get a lot more than either ABC or CBS had to pay to avoid the same outcome. They may even lose without discovery, as it is nearly impossible to believe that the BBC had no knowledge of this very debate in the three years preceding its report and only accidentally edited out the exculpatory parts of Trump’s remarks. However, it’s very likely that discovery will not only uncover the motives behind this segment, but also perhaps expose more than the BBC would like about its narrative manipulations and strategies.

This would be a very good time, in other words, to donate to the Trump Library and cut losses. 

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.

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