Trump’s Legal Battle with BBC Heats Up Over Subpoenas for Family Members
In an ongoing legal tussle, President Donald Trump is appealing to a federal judge to dismiss the BBC’s attempt to obtain testimonies and documents from his family members in connection with a substantial $10 billion defamation lawsuit he has filed against the British broadcaster. This development follows the broadcaster’s move to secure subpoenas for Trump’s close relatives.
Trump’s legal team contends that the BBC is seeking “politically-driven leverage” against him by involving his daughter Ivanka Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his son Donald Trump Jr. in the lawsuit. The argument was presented in a recent court filing.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Kuntz, who recently took over the case in Miami, has yet to make a decision regarding the current dispute. The case was reassigned to Judge Kuntz, who was appointed by Trump, just last week. The previous judge had already scheduled the trial for February.
Attempts by a process server acting on behalf of the BBC to deliver subpoenas to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner faced resistance from Secret Service agents at their residence, as per Trump’s attorneys. A further attempt to serve Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in New York also proved unsuccessful.
Last week, the BBC filed a court request seeking permission to serve the subpoenas via certified mail instead of in-person delivery.
Trump’s defamation lawsuit, filed in December, accuses the BBC of manipulating video edits of his January 6, 2021, speech, which coincided with the Capitol riots, to give a misleading impression of his words. The lawsuit claims the BBC released the edited content strategically to impact the 2024 presidential election against Trump’s interests.
Trump’s attorneys argue, “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.”
Despite the BBC’s admission of the editing error, they dispute the defamation claims made by Trump. For more details, you can read the BBC’s apology here.
