President Donald Trump has filed an eleventh-hour plea to block a court order requiring him to turn over financial details on his sprawling business activities as part of a $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the BBC.
The president sued the publicly funded British broadcaster in Florida in December, claiming it had defamed him by “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively” editing two parts of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech to make it seem as though he had encouraged his supporters to storm the Capitol.
The original complaint argued that the editing damaged the value of Trump’s “brand, properties, and businesses,” leading U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett to order the president to begin turning over information about more than 400 companies owned by the Trump family trust.
The disclosures were supposed to begin by Thursday, but on Wednesday night, Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency motion asking the court to halt the order.
The filing accused the BBC of “demanding a shockingly broad amount of information” from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, including tax returns, ownership and governance instruments, deeds, appraisals, financial statements, licensing records, and digital asset histories of hundreds of affiliated entities.
“The BBC’s motive could not be more transparent—to wrongly exploit this litigation for its own political benefit, as well as the benefit of President Trump’s other political opponents,” the filing argued.
The broadcaster’s attorneys countered in a filing of their own that the information was necessary to assess the massive damages the president is seeking, and that Trump had spent months refusing to provide “any meaningful information” to support the $10 billion claim.
“The Trump Trust’s emergency motion is a transparent effort to evade this Court’s clear and direct order and to continue to avoid the discovery obligations that Plaintiff took on when he chose to file this lawsuit,” they wrote.
The filing also argued, “Simply because the Trump Trust faces an obligation it does not agree with, and is confronted with an imminent deadline of its own making by waiting to file its stay motion until the day before its first Court-ordered disclosure day, does not make its request an emergency.”
Any financial documents turned over to the BBC could be placed under a protective order to prevent wider disclosure, the broadcaster noted.
During a hearing last month, Trump’s lawyers argued that the financial disclosures weren’t relevant because the case had “evolved” to only focus on reputational damage, not business damages, Politico reported at the time.
His team wrote in their emergency motion that the president had filed an amended complaint that updates the damages allegations to focus on “reputational harm as the compensatory injury,” rendering Lett’s original order “obsolete.”
The court is still considering the text of the proposed lawsuit, which is currently under seal, according to Politico.
The BBC’s lawyer, Chuck Tobin, argued at the July hearing that it was impossible to separate Trump’s reputational harm from his business harm since the president has always portrayed himself as a master dealmaker when running for office or governing.
The suit centers on a segment of BBC’s Panorama program, which spliced together Trump saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol,” and, “Fight like hell. If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
The two remarks were made about an hour apart.
The BBC has apologized to Trump for the editing of the Panorama documentary but called for the suit to be dismissed.
The broadcaster’s legal team argued that, because Trump won the 2024 election soon after the program aired, he “cannot plausibly claim that the documentary harmed his reputation.”
In previous court submissions, the BBC noted that more than 100 defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot told courts that they interpreted Trump’s speech as a “call to action.”
The broadcaster has also moved to dismiss the suit, arguing the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over the case because Panorama doesn’t broadcast in the U.S.
