Topline
The trust holding President Donald Trump’s assets asked a federal judge Wednesday to pause an order forcing the trust to turn over Trump’s financial information to the BBC, making a last-ditch effort to keep the president’s personal finances under wraps as the BBC questions whether a 2024 documentary actually caused him $10 billion in damages.
Key Facts
Lawyers for Trump’s trust filed an emergency motion Wednesday asking Judge Enjolique A. Lett to pause an order she issued last week, which directed the trust to turn over financial documents to the BBC by Thursday.
Trump is asking the BBC to pay him $10 billion as part of a defamation lawsuit over a 2024 documentary that misquoted Trump’s speech to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, and the BBC has demanded Trump provide financial information to prove the documentary actually damaged his business and brand enough to justify the 11-figure reward.
Attorneys for Trump’s trust—which holds the president’s assets to distance him from his businesses while in office—argued that once the documents are turned over, no order “can un-disclose them or undo the expense of compiling them,” if a court ultimately finds they were unnecessary to turn over.
Trump is also attempting to get out of turning the documents over by amending his initial lawsuit to argue the BBC documentary only damaged his personal reputation, rather than his businesses, which the trust argued would negate the need for turning over financial documents in the first place.
The BBC’s subpoena for financial documents asks for numerous details about Trump’s personal finances and the value of some 400 businesses he has connections to, including tax returns, though the judge limited the initial subpoena and said the trust only has to hand over documents from 2023 onward.
The BBC responded to the trust Wednesday in a court filing opposing the request to pause the order, arguing it “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.”
chief critic
The trust’s request to delay handing over the financial documents is “just the latest in Plaintiff’s months-long refusal to provide documents, sworn answers to interrogatories, deposition dates—any meaningful information to support his pursuit of $10 billion from the BBC for a documentary the BBC never aired in the United States,” the BBC argued in its filing Wednesday, going on to argue the trust’s filing “is only an ’emergency’ insofar as the Trump Trust has waited until the day before its required production to seek relief, despite the weeks that have passed since the oral and written orders.”
