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A federal judge in Florida on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to block subpoenas sent to members of his inner circle by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as it defends itself against his $10 billion defamation lawsuit.
In the first hearing in the case in Miami, U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett also ruled that Trump must hand over detailed financial records from his businesses subpoenaed by the BBC.
Trump sued the broadcaster in December over the way it spliced together a speech he made before the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, in a Panorama documentary that aired a week before the 2024 presidential election.
The documentary put together three quotes from two sections of a speech into what appeared to be one quote, giving the impression Trump appears to tell supporters that he was going to walk to the Capitol with them to “fight like hell.” The BBC apologized to Trump for the edit but said it had not defamed him.
In his lawsuit, Trump accused the BBC documentary of representing him in a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious” manner.
Lett allowed the BBC to subpoena Trump’s inner circle, Cabinet and federal agencies. The BBC argued that the subpoenas would give evidence of Trump’s state of mind that day.
Bloomberg said the subject of the BBC requests included Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Michael Flynn.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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