The BBC has requested that a Florida court issue a subpoena to members of President Donald Trump’s family as part of the British broadcast company’s legal defense against a $10 million defamation lawsuit the president has brought against them, according to recently released court filings. The legal team for the BBC asked the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida for “authorization to serve third parties Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner,” with subpoenas.
The subpoenas would compel the three individuals to provide testimony, along with documentation, regarding the events that transpired at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021. “The Third Parties have personal knowledge and likely have possession, custody, or control of records relevant to multiple elements of Plaintiff’s claims against the BBC,” the network’s legal team stated in the court filing.
The court has given Trump’s attorneys a deadline to respond to the filing. The folks at CBS News sent a request for comment to the president’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, but did not receive an immediate reply. A spokesperson representing Trump’s legal team accused the BBC of “seeking to harass him [President Trump], his family, and supporters by abusing the deposition process.”
According to a report from CBS News, the statement also said, “The BBC is simply trying to distract from their own obvious liability.” In December 2025, President Trump filed the lawsuit against the BBC, accusing them of defamation, as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices. The suit is centered on the way a 2024 BBC Panorama documentary edited a speech delivered by the president in Washington, just before protesters stormed the Capitol Building.
Trump’s legal team made the case that the BBC “intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers” by cutting together two clips from the same speech. In previous court filings connected to the lawsuit, the president’s lawyers argued that the broadcaster was purposefully attempting to make it seem as if the president explicitly called for violence during the speech.
The president’s attorneys then said that the clips were 55 minutes apart and that the BBC’s edit cut out a “statement calling for peace” in Trump’s address. The president had directed his supporters to go to the Capitol where lawmakers were about to vote to confirm national election results that had come out in favor of former President Joe Biden.
The BBC issued a public apology for the edit in 2025, stating the video had given “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.” The broadcaster then said they would not show the 2024 program again, however, it claimed the video was not legitimate grounds for a defamation lawsuit.
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New court documents have revealed that the BBC tried to issue subpoenas for two of the president’s children and his son-in-law in May 2026, but noted the broadcast company was not able to do so. It tried to subpoena Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, at their Florida home but was kept from doing so by local police officers.
In a different case, a representative of the network tried to serve Donald Trump Jr. with a subpoena at Trump Tower in New York, but was informed by a concierge that the person who usually took those kinds of documents might have been out to lunch. Two days later, the same representative tried again at Trump Tower, only to be told the legal department was not in that day.