A federal judge last week drew a sharp line around President Donald Trump‘s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, ruling the broadcaster can probe how Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, speech was understood by the public — but cannot relitigate the riot at the U.S. Capitol itself.
The ruling was handed down by U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett as the BBC faces continued scrutiny over a 2024 “Panorama” documentary about Trump’s speech on Jan. 6.
The documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — was subsequently labeled as misleading by critics who noticed it omitted Trump’s call for supporters to protest peacefully at the Capitol. The documentary stitched together remarks Trump made nearly an hour apart during his address that made it appear as if he had told his supporters to “fight like hell” down at the Capitol — the comments were actually out of context — shortly before the Capitol riot that day.
“All of the impressions that were received by President Trump’s statements on Jan 6 are at issue,” Lett said at the hearing, according to reports. “The full relitigation of Jan. 6 is not at issue.”
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A source close to Trump’s legal team, which has accused the BBC of a “fishing expedition,” said the judge’s decision on that specific item was significant.
“It’s important because this case is about a very limited splicing that consisted of nine seconds of a more than 50-minute speech and, rather than focus just on that, the BBC is trying to distract the judge, ultimately the jurors in this case, from that very limited scenario, and what they’re trying to do is expand the scope of this case to litigate January 6 simply to take the attention off of them for their own wrongful conduct,” the source told Fox News Digital.
“And so when the judge made that determination that that’s not going to happen, that eliminated the primary defense that the BBC was seeking to employ in this case, which was to create a distraction, to make this case into something that was just going to be unmanageable and unnecessary, which is, ‘We’re going to try the whole January 6 case here.’ The BBC has no standing, legal standing or any basis to bring such a defense.”
Trump filed a lawsuit against the BBC in December in a personal capacity for both defamation and for a violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act for $5 billion apiece, seeking $10 billion total.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Trump’s lawyers argued in a Miami courtroom that the president’s intent and third-party interpretations of his remarks were irrelevant because the lawsuit only points to the exact words Trump used in his speech, according to Politico.
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“What matters is what he said relative to what was broadcast that he said. That’s it. There’s nothing more that needs to be examined,” Trump attorney Alejandro Brito reportedly said.
Brito cited the written apology penned by BBC Chairman Samir Shah to Trump last year, in which Shah admitted that the documentary “gave the mistaken impression that [Trump] had made a direct call for violent action.”
“He acknowledged the falsity,” Brito told the judge, according to the outlet.
However, Sasha Dudding, an attorney for the BBC, noted that Shah had deemed the misleading edit as unintentional, and argued that the intent behind Trump’s speech is fair game for the outlet’s attorneys to investigate, Politico reported.
Dudding pointed to Trump’s own denial within the lawsuit, in which he asserted that he was not responsible for his supporters carrying out the riot at the Capitol, according to Politico.
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Ultimately, Lett ruled that while the BBC can delve into the interpretation of Trump’s speech by his supporters, the trial will not re-examine the cause or legality of the actual riot.
The judge also determined that the BBC overstepped in some instances regarding requests to examine the findings of several investigations into Jan. 6, the outlet reported.
The issue surrounding the documentary’s editing integrity comes after a report from The Telegraph revealed excerpts from a whistleblower dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, a communications advisor hired by the BBC to review its editorial standards.
The whistleblower alleged the network’s documentary spliced two separate comments made by Trump nearly an hour apart on the day of the Capitol riot, which erroneously implied that the president was calling for violence from his supporters.
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“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And I’ll be there with you. And we fight — we fight like hell,” the documentary showed Trump saying, without noting that the statement had been edited.
In reality, Trump said, “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.”
Trump called on his supporters 54 minutes later to “fight like hell” for election integrity.
The controversy ultimately led to the resignations of BBC CEO Deborah Turness and Director-General Tim Davie last year.
What drove the majority of media attention and headlines this week was Lett ordering Trump to hand over financial information as part of the suit, according to Politico.
“All of President Trump’s brand, properties and businesses are impugned or said to have been impugned. Reputational, economic damages, all of that is now at issue in this case,” Lett reportedly said.
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Lett reportedly based the ruling on Trump’s argument that his businesses were negatively impacted by the network’s coverage, thus presenting the opportunity for the BBC to delve into the financial records of over 400 companies controlled by a Trump family trust.
This was widely covered as a significant blow to Trump. Headlines included MS NOW’s “BBC to access Trump’s financial records as his dubious lawsuit starts to backfire,” The Daily Mail’s “Trump suffers humiliating legal blow in $10 billion BBC lawsuit,” and The Guardian’s “Trump must divulge financial details about businesses in $10bn BBC lawsuit.”
However, a source close to the Trump legal team says the judge’s order is “far more limiting” than what’s been reported, saying she still must enter an order specifying what she’d require as part of the discovery process.
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“The judge made it abundantly clear that although she’s going to require certain financial information to be disclosed relating to the trust and the companies that are operated by the trust, that’s not as broad as the BBC would like,” the source told Fox News Digital. “At the end of the day, the financial information that they’re seeking with regard to the Trump Organization has nothing to do with this case … We simply are viewing this in a way that’s going to be far more narrowed and tailored than what’s being reported.”
Trump’s team is now arguing he’s only seeking amends for damage to his reputation rather than to businesses under his umbrella.
“This case is not going to be about any damage caused to the Trump Organization. It’s always been about the damage caused to President Trump,” the source close to Trump’s team said.
While Lett reportedly said she does not possess the power to drop the business damages allegations from the suit, Trump can appeal the decision to one of his own appointees, U.S. District Court Judge Roy Altman.
The BBC, meanwhile, has argued the case should be dismissed on the grounds that a Florida court has no jurisdiction over what the British broadcaster aired across the ocean.
Fox News Digital reached out to the BBC for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Fox News Digital’s Brian Flood contributed to this report.
