US President Donald Trump has asked a federal court to reject the BBC’s request to obtain testimony and documents from three members of his family as part of his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the British broadcaster.
Trump’s lawyers argued in a court filing on Friday that the BBC’s attempt to subpoena his daughter, Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and son Donald Trump Jr. was intended to gain “politically-driven leverage” over the president.
US District Judge Jeffrey Kuntz in Miami had not ruled on the dispute at the time of filing.
Kuntz, who was nominated to the federal bench by Trump, recently took over the case from another judge. Court documents did not immediately explain the reason for the reassignment. The previous judge had scheduled the case for trial in February.
The dispute centres on the BBC’s efforts to serve subpoenas on Trump’s relatives. Trump’s lawyers said a process server attempting to deliver subpoenas to Ivanka Trump and Kushner at their home in May was stopped by Secret Service agents, who said they were not authorised to accept the documents.
The process server later reportedly went to Trump Tower in New York in an unsuccessful attempt to serve Donald Trump Jr.
The BBC subsequently asked the court to allow it to serve the subpoenas through certified mail rather than requiring personal delivery.
Trump filed the $10 billion lawsuit in December, accusing the BBC of defamation over its editing of a documentary featuring portions of his speech near the White House on January 6, 2021.
The president alleges that the broadcaster deliberately combined separate sections of the speech to create a misleading impression of what he said before his supporters attacked the US Capitol as Congress prepared to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.
Trump’s lawsuit further alleges that the BBC released the documentary shortly before the 2024 presidential election in “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the outcome against him.
His lawyers argued that the BBC’s latest request for subpoenas was part of a broader political strategy.
“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,” they wrote.
