WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is asking a federal judge to deny the BBC’s bid for court assistance as the broadcaster seeks testimony and documents from three of his family members in connection with his $10 billion defamation lawsuit.
In a filing Friday, Trump’s personal attorneys argued that the BBC is attempting to gain “politically-driven leverage” by pursuing subpoenas for his daughter Ivanka Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his son Donald Trump Jr.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Kuntz in Miami had not immediately issued a decision on the dispute.
Kuntz, a Trump nominee, took over the case less than a week ago from another judge. The court docket did not immediately explain why the lawsuit was reassigned. The prior judge had scheduled the case for trial in February.
According to Trump’s lawyers, a process server working on behalf of the BBC attempted in May to serve subpoenas on Ivanka Trump and Kushner at their home, but Secret Service agents said they were not authorized to accept them. The attorneys said the same process server later went to Trump Tower in New York in an unsuccessful effort to serve Donald Trump Jr.
In a filing last week, the BBC asked the court to allow it to serve the subpoenas by certified mail rather than requiring personal delivery.
Trump filed the defamation suit in December, accusing the BBC of misleadingly editing parts of the speech he gave near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, before a crowd of his supporters attacked the Capitol in an effort to block Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory. The lawsuit alleges the broadcaster stitched together separate portions of Trump’s remarks to deliberately distort what he said.
The complaint also claims the BBC broadcast the documentary one week before the 2024 presidential election as part of “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the result against Trump.
“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 BBC has apologized to Trump for the misleading edit, but it denies defaming him.
