BREAKING: President Trump Asks Federal Judge To Reject BBC’s Bid To Subpoena Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, And Donald Trump Jr. In $10 Billion Defamation Case, Claiming The BBC Is Trying To Gain “Politically-Driven Leverage” Over Him 🏛️
President Trump has asked a federal judge to block the BBC from securing court assistance in obtaining testimony and documents from three of his family members as part of his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the British broadcaster, according to the Associated Press. Trump’s personal lawyers argued in a Friday court filing that the BBC is trying to gain “politically-driven leverage” over the president by serving subpoenas on daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and son Donald Trump Jr. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Kuntz in Miami, who was nominated to the bench by Trump himself, has not yet ruled on the dispute. Kuntz inherited the case from another judge less than a week ago, and court filings did not specify why the case was reassigned; the previous judge had already set a February trial date.
The subpoena fight has been complicated by logistical failures. In May, a process server working for the BBC attempted to serve Ivanka Trump and Kushner at their residence but was turned away by Secret Service agents who said they lacked authorization to accept the documents, according to the president’s lawyers. The process server reportedly also visited Trump Tower in New York days later in a failed attempt to serve Donald Trump Jr. Given those obstacles, the BBC asked the court last week for permission to serve the subpoenas by certified mail instead of in person, a request Trump’s legal team is now fighting to block entirely, framing it as an extension of what they call an improper discovery campaign. “The relief that the BBC’s Motion seeks cannot be segregated from the politically charged discovery campaign that it is based on, and which has already been ruled as improperly overbroad by this Court,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
The underlying lawsuit, filed in December, accuses the BBC of deceptively editing portions of the speech Trump delivered near the White House on January 6, 2021, shortly before a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory. Trump’s suit claims the broadcaster spliced together separate parts of the speech to intentionally misrepresent what he said, and alleges the BBC aired its documentary a week before the 2024 presidential election in “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the outcome against him. The BBC has already apologized to Trump over the misleading edit but continues to deny that it defamed him, a distinction that leaves the network acknowledging an editorial error while contesting the legal characterization of that error as defamation.