The BBC wholeheartedly believes that Donald Trump's children -- namely his eldest daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared and his eldest son Don Jr. -- have "personal knowledge" about the President that's relevant to fighting the lawsuit the President has lodged against the British network. Still, the Trump kids are making it clear they won't do things the easy way.
The sitting President of the United States is currently embroiled in a defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation in connection with the network's 2024 documentary on the January 6th Capitol insurrection that aired in the UK. Trump claims defamation, arguing that the BBC spliced together parts of his infamous J6 speech.
The broadcaster did, in fact, combine two parts of Trump's speech.
In one segment of his speech, Trump told the crowd, "I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down."
He added just a few minutes later, "We're going to walk down to the Capitol."
In their documentary, the BBC edited the footage of Trump's speech to say, "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you." They then included the line from the end of Trump's 55-minute speech, where he told the mob of supporters to "fight like hell."
"We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore," Trump said in his J6 speech.
The BBC has apologized for its editing but maintains that the edits are far from defamatory.
Nevertheless, Trump perseveres, forcing the broadcasting network to defend itself in court, leading the BBC to seek testimony from the President's children who were present during the infamous J6 fiasco and who, according to the BBC's legal team, "without question have personal knowledge" regarding Trump's true intentions when he delivered that horrifying speech on the Ellipse.
The BCC is actually seeking testimony from anyone who was there when Trump's speech was being drafted and in the hours leading up to him taking the podium.
However, Ivanka, Jared, and Don Jr. are doing their dead level best to hide from process servers to avoid being served the court documents that would legally compel their testimony.
Process servers failed to serve Donald Trump Jr. at the Trump Organization's Trump Tower in New York, and attempting to serve Ivanka and Jared has been a beast in its own right. So much so, in fact, that the BBC has asked the U.S. District Court in Miami to allow them to serve Ivanka and Jared by mail or through another third-party avenue, as it has proven impossible to serve the pair traditionally.
In a motion to the court, the BBC's legal team wrote, "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, yet the BBC has been unable to serve them with Rule 45 subpoenas because the Third Parties — Plaintiff’s eldest son, eldest daughter, eldest son-in-law — are protected by the United States Secret Service as members of the sitting President’s immediate family."
"Specifically, law enforcement officers prevented the BBC’s process server from effecting service on Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump at their home in Florida, and directed the BBC to coordinate service through the U.S. Secret Service."
BBC has even gone so far as to request that the Secret Service be allowed to accept the documents on behalf of the Trump children, but noted in its motion that the Secret Service has already declined to help.
As the broadcasting network continues to work to defend itself against the $10B lawsuit Trump started, the President is coming out with claims that the BBC is harassing his children.
A spokesperson for the President's legal team told the Times, "The BBC intentionally defamed President Donald J Trump, and now the BBC is seeking to harass him, his family and supporters by abusing the deposition process."
"The BBC is simply trying to distract away from their own obvious liability."
It certainly seems that the Trump children fully inherited their father's dodging abilities.
