The US president has sued the BBC over the documentary ‘Trump: A Second Chance?’, seeking $5 billion for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.
listen to this article3 minutes
information
Published March 16, 2026
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has asked a Florida court to dismiss a $10 billion defamation lawsuit brought by US President Donald Trump over editing of speeches, warning that the case could have a “chilling effect” on reporting.
The British state broadcaster said on Monday that the case, which relates to the editing of President Trump’s 2021 speech before the storming of the US Capitol in Washington by a mob of Trump supporters, should be dismissed given the potential impact of the “expensive but baseless lawsuit” on “free speech”.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
The station’s 34-page complaint also challenges the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where Trump filed his lawsuit, and argues that the documentary, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?”, was never broadcast in Florida or the United States.
Lawyers for the network also argued that the president could not “plausibly claim” that the documentary, which aired just before the 2024 presidential election that secured him a second term, “damaged his reputation.”
They said Trump’s case fell far short of the “high hurdle of actual malice,” a key legal requirement in defamation lawsuits.
The BBC has apologized for splicing together two separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, and editing them to appear as if Trump explicitly urged his supporters to attack the Capitol.
Trump filed the suit in December, seeking $5 billion in damages for defamation and another $5 billion for violating the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
The president’s lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting “false, defamatory, deceptive, derogatory, inflammatory and malicious portrayals” about the president, and calls it a “brazen attempt to interfere with and influence” the 2024 US presidential election.
The scandal last year led to the resignation of the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and news director Deborah Turness.
The broadcaster argued that the “chilling effect is clear” given that President Trump is “one of the most powerful and high-profile figures in the world, whose activities are reported daily by the BBC”.
A Florida court has tentatively set a trial date for February 2027.
