The BBC has asked a federal court in Florida for help obtaining documents and testimony from members of President Donald Trump’s family as part of his 10 billion dollar defamation lawsuit against the British broadcaster, according to a court filing made public Friday.
BBC lawyers argued in the filing that Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. have personal knowledge and likely hold records relevant to Trump’s claims against the network. The broadcaster said it has been unable to serve subpoenas on the three because they are protected by Secret Service and other security personnel who do not accept subpoenas on their behalf.
Trump filed the lawsuit in December, accusing the BBC of defamation along with deceptive and unfair trade practices over how a 2024 documentary edited a speech he gave on January 6, 2021, before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. The suit accuses the network of splicing together separate portions of the speech to intentionally misrepresent what Trump said, calling the edit a brazen attempt to influence the 2024 presidential election.
What We Know So Far
The BBC has previously apologized to Trump over the edit but maintains it did not defame him. In its filing, the network argued that testimony from the three family members is relevant to Trump’s claim that it would be materially false to suggest he incited violence on January 6.
Accounts differed on the specific details the filing cites regarding what Trump’s family members allegedly witnessed or did that day. One report said the filing states Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump were present in the Oval Office while Trump was still revising his speech, and that Trump Jr. spoke directly with his father after violence broke out at the Capitol. A separate report said the filing instead claims Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump were present when Trump spoke with then Vice President Mike Pence before the speech, and that Trump Jr. separately urged then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to condemn the violence, while Kushner drafted a proposed statement condemning the events that was never used. These differing accounts of the filing’s contents had not been reconciled.
The BBC said it asked Trump to accept the subpoenas on his daughter and son in law’s behalf, or to direct the Secret Service to allow the subpoenas to be served directly, but he declined. The broadcaster has asked the court for permission to serve the subpoenas by email and certified mail instead. The presiding judge gave Trump’s legal team until Friday to respond to the request.
Reports also differed on the case’s scheduled trial date, with one account describing a trial provisionally set for February without specifying a year, and another specifying a trial date in February 2027, should the case proceed that far.
A federal judge in Florida separately granted Trump a temporary reprieve earlier this month from an order requiring him to disclose details of his business empire’s financial performance as part of the case. U.S. District Judge Roy Altman agreed to pause that order while considering an amended complaint from Trump that would narrow his claim of damage to both his business and his reputation.
What Authorities and Attorneys Are Saying
Trump’s legal team accused the BBC of trying to distract from what it called the network’s obvious liability, saying in a statement that the BBC intentionally defamed the president and was now seeking to harass him, his family and his supporters by abusing the deposition process.
A BBC spokesperson has said the corporation sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, while maintaining there is no valid basis for a defamation claim. The network’s earlier public apology described the edit as an error of judgment and said the program would not be broadcast again in its original form on any BBC platform.
Why This Matters
The dispute has already had significant internal consequences at the BBC, contributing to the resignation of the corporation’s director general, Tim Davie, and its head of news, Deborah Turness, in November of last year, underscoring how seriously the organization treated the fallout even while contesting the legal merits of Trump’s claim.
The attempt to compel testimony from Trump’s adult children and son in law represents an unusually direct legal effort to draw the president’s family into the litigation, and the difficulty serving them due to Secret Service protection illustrates a practical obstacle particular to lawsuits involving protected public officials and their immediate families. Whether the court grants the BBC’s request to serve subpoenas by email and certified mail could set a notable precedent for how litigants reach security protected family members in similar future cases.
The conflicting accounts of what the family members allegedly witnessed or did on January 6 also underscore how central their testimony could be to resolving a key factual dispute at the heart of the case: whether Trump’s actions and communications that day support or undermine his claim that portraying him as inciting violence was false.
What Happens Next
Trump’s legal team faces a Friday deadline to respond to the BBC’s request to serve subpoenas by alternative means. The court’s ruling on that request will determine whether the BBC can proceed with obtaining testimony from Ivanka Trump, Kushner and Trump Jr. ahead of trial.
The case’s broader timeline remains somewhat unclear given the discrepancy in reported trial dates, though both accounts point to a proceeding still well over a year away. In the meantime, the dispute over Trump’s business financial disclosures remains pending before Judge Altman as he considers Trump’s amended complaint narrowing the scope of his damage claims.
Reporting drawn from the Associated Press, Sky News and NBC News
