President Donald Trump has made an emergency lawsuit bid to stop the BBC from obtaining his financial records. His legal team filed the motion on Wednesday, just one day before a court-ordered deadline requiring his trust to begin handing over sensitive documents.
The president’s legal team is seeking to stop or narrow BBC financial discovery
The fight stems from a lawsuit Trump filed against the British broadcaster over its Panorama documentary, Trump: A Second Chance? He claims the programme damaged his reputation and business interests by splicing together three clips from a speech he gave. The edit made it appear he urged supporters to attack the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The BBC has apologized for the edit but rejects Trump’s demands for financial compensation.
Late last month, Judge Enjoliqué Aytch Lett granted the BBC permission to probe financial records from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust dating to January 1, 2023. The order compels the trust to start producing records by Thursday. Trump’s lawyers now want that order paused or significantly limited.
Attorney Alejandro Brito wrote in the filing that “the BBC’s improperly broad subpoena demands the Trust’s confidential tax, ownership, and financial records for approximately 400 entities.” He warned that “once the Trust were to begin handing those records over to the BBC, that disclosure could not be undone.”
The documents would expose Trump’s cryptocurrency and stock profits, plus business transactions from hundreds of entities tied to assets his family manages. Brito argued the BBC faces no real harm from a delay.
“Against the Trust’s irreversible injury, the BBC cannot point to any injury, only to brief delay, which does not constitute harm,” he wrote. He noted that fact discovery remains open for months and questioned why the BBC needs complete financial records within ten days.
Trump has also asked District Judge Roy Altman to let him amend the lawsuit. They want to shift focus toward reputational harm rather than financial losses, which they say would keep disclosures “proportional to the needs of the case.”
The BBC has fought back on two fronts. First, it argues the defamation claims lack merit despite the editing error. Second, it insists US courts hold no jurisdiction over the foreign corporation and has moved to dismiss the case entirely.
(Source: The Hill)
Originally reported by Devanshi Basu on Mandatory.
