The BBC has asked a US court for permission to subpoena Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner — the president's two eldest children and son-in-law — as it builds its defence against a defamation lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump over a 2024 documentary about the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
In a motion filed on Friday, the BBC's lawyers argued that the three family members have "personal knowledge" of Trump's intentions when he delivered a speech outside the Capitol that day, before a mob of his supporters stormed the building in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Drawing on evidence previously gathered by a US congressional committee, the filing states that Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump were present when their father revised and delivered the speech, and that Kushner drafted a proposed statement for Trump that would have condemned the use of violence. The BBC contends it is entitled to discover Trump's "intention behind the speech and anything that bears on the impression his audience could have reasonably obtained".
Attempts to serve the subpoenas in person have so far been blocked. A representative for the BBC's legal team was refused entry at a police checkpoint outside Ivanka Trump and Kushner's Florida home and was later told by the Secret Service it could not accept the documents. Two separate attempts to serve Donald Trump Jr at Trump Tower in New York were also unsuccessful. The BBC is now asking the court to allow service by email and certified mail.
Trump filed the lawsuit in Florida last December, accusing the BBC of "intentionally, maliciously and deceptively doctoring" his January 6 speech in the Panorama documentary Trump, A Second Chance? — specifically, of splicing footage to make it appear he directly urged his supporters to attack the Capitol. The BBC has apologised for an editing error that gave "the mistaken impression" of a direct call for violence, but has asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing the documentary does not meet the legal standard for defamation and was not made available on any of its US platforms. Trump's lawyers have since admitted they have no evidence the documentary was distributed in the United States through any of the channels they originally cited.
The lawsuit is one of several Trump has brought against media organisations that published reporting he considers critical or damaging. The BBC is being represented by Ballard Spahr, a law firm that has also defended the New York Times and the Associated Press in similar cases. A trial date has been set for February 2027, should the case proceed that far. Why it matters: the outcome could set significant legal precedents around how US defamation law applies to foreign broadcasters and to editorial decisions made in documentary filmmaking.