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President Trump must make detailed information about his finances available to attorneys for the BBC in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the venerable UK broadcaster, a Miami judge ruled Tuesday.
The president had accused the Beeb of defaming him by deceptively editing his speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, ahead of the Capitol riot that delayed the official count of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, as part of a broadcast of its “Panorama” program that aired days before the 2024 election.
The initial complaint, filed in December, argued that “the injury to President Trump’s business and personal reputation … and their efforts to falsely, maliciously, and defamatorily portray President Trump as a violent insurrectionist, continue into the present, thereby causing massive economic damage to his brand value and … direct harm to his professional and occupational interests, including, without limitation, the value of his brand, properties, and businesses”.
On Tuesday, US Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett ruled that Trump had to back those claims up, saying: “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,” according to Politico.
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Trump attorney Alejandro Brito had tried to argue that his client was now only seeking compensation for damage to his reputation rather than the more than 400 companies under the umbrella of the Trump Organization.
“Even if there has been a harm to the brand, we are not pursuing that as part of our damages,” claimed Brito, later adding: “It’s a far more narrow scope of what this case is about.”
Attorney Chuck Tobin, representing the BBC, had argued the attempt by Brito to water down the complaint was meaningless.
“He ran for president of the United States on a platform of the art of the deal,” Tobin said of Trump. “You cannot separate the man and his reputation from his operation of his businesses.”
In the end, Lett ruled that she could not remove the business-related claims from the complaint.
Brito did not immediately say whether he would appeal Lett’s ruling to case judge Roy Altman, a Trump appointee.
The “Panorama” documentary, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” featured footage of Trump appearing to tell rally-goers: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you and we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
The clip was spliced together from three separate parts of the 45th president’s speech – with a nearly hour-long gap edited out to make it seem like one fluent sentence.
The BBC edited out the president saying, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
The program also made it appear as if members of the Proud Boys, an extremist right-wing group, were inspired to march toward the Capitol after Trump’s speech. That footage, however, was recorded before Trump’s address.
BBC Chair Samir Shah apologized to Trump for the deceptive edits in November 2025, but insisted it had not defamed the president. The scandal also triggered the resignations of BBC Director General Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness.
Trump’s team claims to have standing to sue because US subscribers to streaming service BritBox or Americans who use virtual private networks (VPNs) might have seen the documentary.
