Left: President Donald Trump speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon). Right: Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg participates in a panel at an American Bar Association meeting in April 2025. (PBS NewsHour/YouTube).
Attorneys for President Donald Trump and the Justice Department appeared in court Tuesday morning for a high-stakes subpoena dispute, asking Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg not to assist the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in defending itself.
The case partly involves a subpoena issued to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone. The broader Washington, D.C., proceeding seeks to unseal 2022 court opinions addressing executive privilege, attorney-client privilege and the Jan. 6 investigation.
Trump sued the BBC in December 2025 over its documentary, “Trump: A Second Chance,” after the network acknowledged that the film “gave the mistaken impression that [he] had made a direct call for violent action” on Jan. 6. The BBC had edited “excerpts from different points” of Trump’s Ellipse speech out of sequence. Trump subsequently filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida, accusing the broadcaster of making it appear that he had urged supporters to foment the January 6 Capitol riot.
To support its defense, the BBC separately asked Boasberg to unseal, to the “greatest extent possible,” the “fact-specific rationale” explaining “why” several executive privilege rulings went against Trump during special counsel Jack Smith’s grand jury investigation.
The DOJ has moved to quash the Cipollone subpoena, arguing that the former counsel was “not authorized” to testify or provide the requested documents. The Trump administration is therefore seeking to prevent a media defendant from obtaining records that could help it prevail against Trump’s lawsuit.
In early September, Boasberg said the BBC had presented “convincing arguments” and stood a “decent chance” of obtaining the material if the documents proved “necessary.”
The standard, the jurist appointed by President Barack Obama explained at the time, “requires a need to avoid a possible injustice in another judicial proceeding.”
Before joining the federal judiciary, Boasberg was appointed to the District of Columbia Superior Court by then-President George W. Bush.
Following Tuesday’s hearing, Boasberg ordered the BBC to submit supplemental filings by Nov. 17 addressing whether privilege was waived as to Cipollone because of his earlier testimony.
BBC attorney Maxwell Mishkin argued that the “government can’t argue in 2022 that the privilege has been waived, and then turn around in 2026, and say the privilege has not been waived.”
“Some of these opinions are opinions on President Trump’s motions to stay orders compelling the testimony,” Mishkin told Boasberg. “And we understand — we’re not sure — but we understand through the redaction that the government was arguing: Wait a minute, there’s no cause to stay here, the witness has already testified, the privilege has been waived.”
“The government cannot take a contrary position on an issue in which it won in the prior proceeding and it reached a final decision,” Mishkin said.
The DOJ must respond by Nov. 24.
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