Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said President Donald Trump could be in line for substantial damages if he follows through on his threat to sue the BBC over an allegedly deceptive edit of his Jan. 6 speech that appeared in a 2024 documentary.
Speaking Monday on “Fox & Friends,” Jarrett argued that the potential payout could be significant, even if it’s too early to attach a precise number.
“It’s hard to put a value on it at this early juncture, but it’s considerable,” he said.
Jarrett pointed to the resignations of two senior BBC figures — BBC News CEO Deborah Turness and Director-General Tim Davie — saying they stepped down after the controversy erupted. To Jarrett, those departures undercut the corporation’s insistence that the edit wasn’t defamatory.
“Two top executives resigned in disgrace when they removed the slander,” he said. “And yet the BBC still claims it wasn’t defamatory, which is absurd. They knew it was wrong.”
The documentary, which examined Trump’s remarks before the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, drew heavy criticism from Trump allies and media watchdogs. Jarrett said the program crossed into defamation by reshaping the meaning of Trump’s statements.
“[It’s] a clear case of what I think is defamation,” he said, claiming the edit removed Trump’s calls for supporters to act “peacefully,” then spliced comments made about an hour apart to make them appear like a single continuous message with a sharper tone.
Trump has publicly floated a lawsuit seeking up to $5 billion. In an earlier statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team accused the BBC of altering the documentary — aired about a week before the 2024 presidential election — to influence voters.
The BBC has acknowledged the edit was wrong and said it regrets how the clip was handled. A BBC spokesperson said last Thursday that the corporation had responded to Trump’s lawyers and that BBC chair Samir Shah sent a personal letter to the White House expressing regret for the edit. The spokesperson also said the BBC has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any of its platforms.
Still, the corporation maintains it has no legal liability. “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,” the spokesperson said.
According to Sky News, Shah has also told staff the BBC intends to fight any legal action, stressing that the corporation believes a defamation case would not succeed and that it must protect the public funding it receives.
Turness, who resigned after the controversy, similarly defended the organization, saying the BBC is not structurally biased and that while errors can happen, they don’t reflect corruption or institutional prejudice.
“There is no institutional bias. Mistakes are made,” she said.
