Judge grants Trump permission to amend complaint in $10B BBC defamation lawsuit

A district judge has granted President Donald Trump’s Leave to File First Amended Complaint, a formal request for permission to update a lawsuit, in his legal battle against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

The BBC insisted that Trump missed the deadline to modify his complaint, but United States District Judge Roy K. Altman sided with the 47^th president on Monday.

Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the network in December, seeking $5 billion for defamation and $5 billion for alleged violations of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

“Today’s strong and thoughtful ruling is a major win for President Trump’s powerhouse lawsuit against the formerly respected and now disgraced BBC, which defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team stated. President Trump is holding the leftist BBC, along with all of its comrades in the mainstream media, accountable for their peddling of Fake News through deception and maliciously defamatory conduct.”

 

The ruling allows Trump’s legal team to narrow the claim and limit the extent of information, including financial records, that must be released as part of the proceedings.

 The lawsuit centers around a 2024 “Panorama” documentary, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?”

The documentary had spliced together clips from Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech delivered roughly an hour apart, creating the false impression that he had urged his conservative supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell” in a single breath.

 

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And I’ll be there with you. And we fight — we fight like hell!”

Michael Prescott,

 

 a communications adviser hired by the BBC to review its editorial standards, first blew the whistle about the suspicious video editing.

In the uncut footage, Trump actually said, “We’re going to walk down — and I’ll be there with you … 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, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.” He then later told his supporters to “fight like hell” for legal challenges regarding the vote.

 

The fallout from the misleading documentary triggered a major shakeup at the top of the network, forcing the resignations of BBC CEO Deborah Turness and Director-General Tim Davie. Face-to-face with legal action, BBC Chairman Samir Shah sent a personal letter to the White House apologizing to President Trump for the deceptive edit, though the network claimed it stopped short of legal liability.

“While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim,” a BBC spokesperson added.

The documentary was released one week before the 2024 presidential election took place, raising concerns that it likely intentionally swayed public opinion of Trump.

 

Because Trump originally argued that the documentary damaged his “brand, properties, and businesses,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjolique Lett granted the BBC’s request for corporate financial disclosures. While the court ordered the records produced, a protective order was issued to keep those sensitive files from being made public.