Trump dismisses $10 billion portion of BBC defamation suit

President Donald Trump has dropped a portion of his multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation, according to court documents filed on Thursday, July 16, 2026. The move dismisses claims against the broadcaster's commercial and production arms while allowing the core lawsuit against the BBC itself to proceed.

The legal action, originally filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in December 2025, stems from a 2024 BBC Panorama documentary titled "Trump: A Second Chance?" The lawsuit alleges the program deceptively edited a clip of Trump's speech on January 6, 2021. The contested edit spliced together two segments from different parts of the speech, creating a 12-second clip where Trump appeared to say, "We're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell." The actual statements were separated by more than 50 minutes in the original address.

In the court filing, Trump and the studios defendants stipulated that all claims against BBC Studios Distribution Limited and BBC Studios Productions Limited are "dismissed with prejudice," with each party bearing its own legal...