Judge swapped in Trump's defamation case against BBC

A judge who was recently nominated by Donald Trump to serve in Florida's federal court has taken over as judge in the US president's $10bn defamation case against the BBC.

Jeffrey Kuntz was nominated as a federal judge by Trump in April and confirmed by a 51-46 majority in the Republican-led Senate last month.

He was previously an appeals court judge in Florida and replaces Judge Roy Altman, who had also been nominated by Trump in 2019.

Altman was previously overseeing the case in which Trump is suing the BBC over the way its Panorama programme edited a speech he gave outside the Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January 2021.

It is one of 17 cases that have been transferred to Kuntz following his appointment to the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida in July.

Announcing the nomination in April on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump praised Kuntz's work in Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal, saying "Jeffrey has been TOUGH and SMART and delivered strong results for the Sunshine State."

Trump's case against the BBC is currently scheduled for a trial in February 2027. The president has requested a jury trial.

The broadcaster has previously apologised for editing together two different sections of the speech he gave before the 2021 Capitol riots.

But the BBC has asked for the case to be dismissed, arguing that the programme did not meet the legal criteria for defamation and that the Florida court does not have jurisdiction over the corporation because the programme was not available there.

As a Florida appeals judge, Kuntz was involved in another defamation case brought by the president.

On 12 February 2025, he was one of three judges who ruled in Trump's favour to allow the president to continue a lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize board after it honoured the New York Times and Washington Post for reporting on purported Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The case is ongoing.

Kuntz's appointment in April by Trump prompted accusations of a conflict of interest from opponents as it emerged he had been in discussions about a potential federal court appointment at the time of the Pulitzer case.

Kuntz said Florida judicial ethics rules had not required him to step aside from the case, and he was only contacted by the White House after he had given his legal opinion.

As an appeals judge, Kuntz was also involved in a wide variety of other cases, ranging from the release of information from grand jury proceedings about late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, to whether a survivor of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting could sue a security company that trained and employed the shooter.

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