Judge gives Trump a legal victory by allowing him to to amend $10 billion BBC lawsuit

A federal judge handed President Donald Trump a minor legal victory Monday by allowing him to amend his $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC in a move that is expected to help him dodge sharing financial information with the outlet.

The president sued the network in December in his personal capacity for defamation over the BBC airing a program in 2024 that edited clips from his speech on January 6, 2021, to make it seem like he was inciting violence.

United States District Judge Roy K. Altman gave the president permission to file an amended complaint by next week, and dismissed the BBC's request to dismiss the lawsuit as "moot." 

The federal judge said the network can file a new motion to dismiss after the amended complaint is filed. 

"Today’s strong and thoughtful ruling is a major win for President Trump’s powerhouse lawsuit against the formerly respected and now disgraced BBC, which defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election," a spokesman for Trump's legal team told Fox News. 

"President Trump is holding the leftist BBC, along with all of its comrades in the mainstream media, accountable for their peddling of Fake News through deception and maliciously defamatory conduct," he added.

The lawsuit comes after the British news corporation apologized for the editing, acknowledging that it failed to live up to the company's standards by giving a false impression and promised to never show the segment again. But the network declined to say it was defamatory.

The segment edited Trump's declaration at the White House that he and his supporters were "going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women," and his statement nearly an hour later that Republicans should "fight like hell." 

The clip instead combined the comments to have the president state: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol... and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.