BBC files motion asking US court to throw out Trump’s $10bn lawsuit

US president sued BBC over the documentary ‘Trump: A Second Chance?, seeking $5bn for defamation, $5bn for unfair trade practices.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has asked a court in Florida in the US to dismiss a $10bn defamation lawsuit brought by United States President Donald Trump over the editing of one of his speeches, warning that the case could have a “chilling effect” on reporting.

The British national broadcaster said on Monday that the case, which relates to an edit of Trump’s 2021 speech ahead of the attack on the US Capitol in Washington by a crowd of his supporters, should be dismissed given the potential impact of the “expensive yet groundless litigation” on “free speech”.

The broadcaster’s 34-page filing also challenged the jurisdiction of the federal court for the Southern District of Florida, where Trump lodged his lawsuit, arguing that the documentary, titled Trump: A Second Chance?, never aired in Florida or the United States.

Lawyers for the broadcaster also argued that the US president could not “plausibly claim” that the documentary, which aired shortly before the presidential election in 2024 that secured him a second term in office, had “harmed his reputation”.

Trump’s case, they said, fell “well short of the high bar of actual malice” – a key legal requirement in defamation suits.

The BBC has apologised for the edit, which spliced together two separate sections of Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, making it appear that he had explicitly urged supporters to attack the US Capitol.

Trump filed his lawsuit in December, seeking $5bn in damages for defamation and a further $5bn for violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

The president’s lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction” of him, calling it “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 US presidential election.

The furore triggered the resignations of BBC Director General Tim Davie and Director of News Deborah Turness last year.

The broadcaster claimed that “the chilling effect is clear”, given that Trump was “among the most powerful and high-profile individuals in the world, on whose activities the BBC reports every day”.

The Florida court has provisionally set a trial date for February 2027.