The BBC asked a federal judge to dismiss President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit, warning that allowing it to proceed would have “massive implications” for foreign media companies worldwide.
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The British Broadcasting Corporation filed the motion Monday in federal court in Miami, targeting Trump’s amended complaint in a defamation case that has escalated for nearly a year.
The suit stems from a 2024 Panorama documentary that spliced together sections of Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021 speech, creating what the lawsuit said were false impressions that he directly incited the Capitol riot. The BBC apologized for the edit but refused to pay damages.
The BBC pointed out in that Trump’s revised lawsuit had refused to argue against the documentary’s claim that his own followers treated him like a “cult leader” and that Jan. 6 rioters had said in court that they thought they were following the president’s directives.
“Based on the clear record established in robust jurisdictional discovery, Plaintiff lacks any good-faith basis to ask this Court to exercise jurisdiction over the BBC,” the filing said.
The BBC’s central argument is that it never broadcast the documentary in the United States and used geo-blocking software to prevent Americans from watching it on its streaming platform, iPlayer.
Trump’s team pointed to 34 instances of viewers using a virtual private network — a tool that masks a user’s location — to access the documentary from Florida. The BBC called that theory legally reckless.
“[E]xercising jurisdiction based on the mere possibility of unauthorized access via VPN — which no court has done — would upend personal jurisdiction jurisprudence and have massive implications for foreign companies with online presences,” the filing said.
“Straining to manufacture specific jurisdiction, Plaintiff points to 34 unauthorized alleged play-starts by viewers using a VPN in Florida,” the filing added.
Those 34 alleged play-starts came from just 10 users and accounted for 0.006% of the documentary’s 570,000 total streams, the filing noted. The BBC also argued Trump cannot plausibly claim the film damaged his reputation.
He won re-election eight days after it aired, carrying Florida by 13 points.
His demands for damages told their own story — a $1 billion threat letter became a $5 billion initial complaint, which ballooned into a $10 billion amended claim now “based only on alleged reputational harm,” the filing said.
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The controversy had already cost the BBC two top executives — former Director-General Tim Davie and former head of news Deborah Turness — both of whom resigned over the fallout.
“The chilling effect here is clear, where Plaintiff repeatedly sues the news media over coverage of his political career,” the filing said. “All the more so when Plaintiff is among the most powerful and high-profile individuals in the world, on whom the BBC reports every day.”
The filing noted that when the documentary aired, Trump had already been indicted on four counts related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election — meaning the film broke no new ground on his reputation.
“[N]othing better reflects how Plaintiff’s supporters understood his remarks than their own statements,” the filing said, “and over 100 defendants charged with offenses related to January 6 told the courts that they interpreted Plaintiff’s remarks as a call to action.”
One Capitol defendant, a Proud Boys member, told a court he was “responding to the entreaties of the then commander in chief, President Trump . . . to ‘stop the steal,'” the filing noted. The so-called QAnon Shaman stated that “but for the specific words of the then-President during his January 6, 2021 speech,” he would not have entered the Capitol.
The BBC also noted that the documentary featured commentators calling Trump a “cult leader” — a characterization Trump’s complaint did not challenge. His lawsuit targeted only a 12-second edited clip.
Trump called the BBC’s public apology “proof positive of actual malice.” The filing said the opposite was true.
“[T]he BBC’s apology for any unintentional, mistaken impression that the Documentary may have created militates against a finding of actual malice,” it said.
Trump separately sued under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act — a consumer protection law — but the BBC called that a dead end too.
“At bottom, Plaintiff cannot salvage his deficient defamation claim with a deficient FDUTPA claim,” the filing said.
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