Trump wants $10 billion from BBC but says asking for his finances is ‘disproportionate’

In the latest twist in Trump’s defamation case against the BBC, the president’s legal team has filed an emergency motion to block the BBC from accessing his financial records, arguing the subpoena is a “disproportionate” and a “shockingly broad” fishing expedition.

According to the filing, made in the Southern District of Florida on August 5, 2026, the BBC’s subpoena for tax returns, asset histories, and business records from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, the legal entity that holds the president’s business assets across approximately 400 affiliated entities, should be quashed. Or, at minimum, impose strict limits on what the BBC can access.

According to The Hill:

If the emergency motion is not approved, the BBC would be granted insight on Trump’s crypto and stock profit, as well as business transactions from at least 400 entities and companies tied to his personal assets managed by family.

The BBC also fired back on 5 August 2026. In its own filing in the Southern District of Florida, the broadcaster accused Trump and his trust of a ‘transparent effort to evade’ the court’s order. It pointed out that Trump has produced just 735 pages of documents in response to discovery — ‘consisting mostly of publicly accessible news reports and social media’ — while the BBC has already produced 88,855 pages.

The defamation suit Trump is pursuing against the BBC alleges the BBC “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctored” a speech in a Panorama documentary to make it appear that he encouraged people to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. BBC apologised for the edit.

Irony of “shockingly broad”

The irony is hard to miss. Trump’s legal team is now calling the BBC’s subpoena a “shockingly broad” fishing expedition, complaining that the broadcaster wants to poke through his financial records across 400 entities in the very same defamation case where Trump is demanding $10 billion over a documentary edit.

Apparently, asking for $10 billion is perfectly narrow and reasonable, but asking to see the financial records that would actually prove or disprove that claim is just too much.

The emergency motion filed by Trump’s lawyers specifically calls out the BBC’s “tactic,” arguing that the timing of the subpoena, served just 25 days after similar requests were made to the president and before his responses were even due, suggests that the BBC is not genuinely seeking relevant evidence.

Instead, the filing suggests, the BBC is using the subpoena to pressure and dig through Trump’s entire financial universe for “political” reasons, rather than for legitimate discovery tied to the actual defamation claim.

By The Canary

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