A US judge has rejected the BBC's motion to dismiss Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the broadcaster allowing the case to proceed to trial.
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The US president's claim is based on the way the BBC edited a speech he gave on 6 January 2021 in its Panorama documentary.
On Tuesday, US District Judge Jeffrey T. Kuntz denied the British broadcaster’s attempt to have the defamation claim dismissed. He did, however, throw out a second claim, which Trump had brought under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
Each claim was for at least $5bn (€4.48bn), meaning Kuntz's ruling halves the lawsuit from $10 billion (€8.97bn) to at least $5 billion.
The case centres on a BBC documentary that spliced together two separate parts of the speech. The edit made it appear that Trump had explicitly urged his supporters to attack the US Capitol in Washington. Trump accuses the broadcaster of deceptively editing the programme to make it look as though he was inciting violence.
In his 40-page ruling, Kuntz wrote: “Whether President Trump can prove these claims and establish he sustained damages at summary judgment or trial is left for another day.”
But he said...