George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley says that President Donald Trump faces an uphill battle in his threatened multi-billion-dollar defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), suggesting he would have better odds suing in the United Kingdom.
Turley stated Monday on Fox News’ “America Reports” that while the BBC’s editing of a 2024 documentary about the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot was “misleading” and difficult to see as legitimate, the legal standard in the United States heavily favors media organizations.
On Friday, President Donald Trump announced his intent to sue the British government-funded network for up to $5 billion after the BBC admitted to splicing two separate clips of his January 6 speech in the documentary, “Trump: A Second Chance?”.
The edited BBC version shows Trump saying, “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.”
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However, the original, unedited footage shows Trump inserting a clear call for a peaceful gathering, saying, “We’re gonna walk to the Capitol and we’re gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women and we’re probably not gonna be cheering so much for some of them,” before later stating the comments about fighting.
Turley noted that the deleted portions—Trump’s mention of going “peacefully” and the purpose being to “cheer on our allies”—are “material points for any legitimate news organization.”
According to Turley, the main hurdle for Trump in a US court is the high legal bar for defamation against a public figure, known as the actual malice standard, established by the 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan.
This standard requires the former president to prove that the BBC knowingly made a false statement or published the untrue information with reckless disregard for the truth.
“The problem is the legal standard… So they’re likely to file here in the United States, but we have a much more protective standard for the media and for free speech,” Turley explained.
He suggested that the BBC has a strong defense: arguing that their error was one of poor editing, not actual malice.
“BBC can argue that ‘look, we messed up. We admitted it, it was bad editing. But this was not actual malice. In fact, what the editor was trying to do was capture what the editor believed was the thrust of his comments and that was to stir up the crowd and frankly get them angry,'” Turley said.
While Turley believes the case would be easier to bring in the United Kingdom, where defamation standards are less protective of the media, he noted the case is “probably a bit too late to file over in London.”
BBC Chair Samir Shah sent a letter to Trump to apologize for the edits last Thursday, admitting they gave “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.”
However, the network maintains that the apology does not constitute a basis for a lawsuit. A BBC spokesperson told the Washington Examiner: “While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim.”
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