A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump can proceed with his $10 billion lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corp. over a misleading edit of a speech he gave to supporters before they attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Kuntz in Miami on Tuesday denied the BBC’s request to dismiss Trump’s defamation claim against the news outlet, giving a significant boost to president’s campaign of litigation against the media.

The 12-second clip was part of a BBC documentary about Trump that was broadcast a week before the 2024 presidential election. It spliced together two different remarks by Trump 55 minutes apart, creating what the BBC later acknowledged was the mistaken impression that he’d directly called for violent action.

Kuntz, a Trump appointee, said the case is different from other lawsuits Trump has filed against outlets like CNN and the Wall Street Journal alleging defamation in specific stories.

“Those cases involved a news entity reporting on a story,” Kuntz said. “Here, the news entity created the story.”

In the disputed clip, Trump said: “We’re going to 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 going to have a country anymore.”

“This two sentence, twelve-second segment, represents the core of Trump’s complaint,” Kuntz wrote. “However, the issue with the statement is that Trump never said it.”

The ruling is a win for Trump following recent setbacks. Last month, a different judge threw out a revised $10 billion defamation suit Trump had filed against the Wall Street Journal due to a lack of evidence and barred the president from filing it again. Trump had to refile a similar suit against the New York Times after a judge dismissed it.

The BBC apologized after Trump threatened legal action but before he sued. The news outlet denies defaming the president.

“We are surprised by this decision but respect the court’s authority and note the case will now proceed to the next stage,” the BBC said in a statement. “We remain confident in our position and will continue to respond through the proper legal process.”

Kuntz said in his ruing that the edit was more than just “trimming around the edges” because it had the effect of “creating something different than what was stated in the speech.”

“Editing is often required,” Kuntz said. “However, given the time disparity between the two statements, the distance itself tends toward a plausible inference that BBC knew or should have known that the segment they were creating would not and could not have been a truthful statement.”

The judge ultimately held that Trump’s complaint went beyond claiming negligence and plausibly alleged the BBC had acted recklessly.

“A Huge Victory against Fake News BBC, a terrible abuser of the truth, just handed down by highly respected District Court Judge, Jeffrey T. Kuntz, of the Southern District of Florida,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “We will continue fighting against, and defeating, all of those who try to deceive the American People!”

Kuntz did toss out a narrower allegation Trump made against the BBC under a Florida consumer protection law.

Judges in other cases have held that Trump failed to show news outlets had acted with “actual malice,” the legal standard for public figures to prove defamation. The standard, established by the Supreme Court decades ago to protect press freedom, requires that public figures show the publication knew that a disputed statement was false or or had reckless disregard for whether it was false.

Kuntz pointed to the nature of the edit, the BBC’s later acknowledgment that it had created a misleading impression, as well as other alleged instances in which the outlet had played “fast and loose with the factual accuracy of their media content.”

“Thus, Trump paints a picture that demonstrates the BBC has a record of allowing the publication of false statements in their portrayal of Trump,” the judge wrote.

The ruling isn’t a finding that the BBC defamed Trump but it means the president may get an opportunity to prove his allegations, including in a potential trial.

The exchange of evidence in the case is ongoing. Trump separately asked Kuntz on Tuesday to overturn portions of three discovery orders issued by a magistrate judge assigned to the case, including a requirement that the president sit for a deposition by Dec. 11 and a warning that the suit could be tossed out if he fails to do so.

Trump says in the filing that he will testify but wants the deposition pushed to between Jan. 11 and Jan. 22 to accommodate his presidential duties and Secret Service security requirements.

The BBC has separately been pressing ahead with an effort to subpoena dozens of people from Trump’s inner circle and former cabinet members to gather information about his state of mind before and during the speech.

The case is Trump v. British Broadcasting Corporation, 25-cv-25894, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida.

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