US Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Aytch Lett’s ruling from the bench last week is now formal. Lett issued a nine-page written order on July 27 directing the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust to turn over financial records in Trump’s roughly $10 billion defamation suit against the BBC.
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The trust, which the parties agree controls more than 400 of Trump’s companies, must make its first substantial production within 10 days, covering records from January 1, 2023, onward, and continue weekly until complete.
The written order tracks what Lett said from the bench, telling the court plainly that “all of President Trump’s brand, properties and businesses are impugned.” Because Trump’s own complaint put those business interests at the center of the case, she found both reputational and economic damages fair game for discovery, rejecting the trust’s arguments that it wasn’t a party to the case, that the subpoena was overly broad, and that complying now was premature.
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The order also formalizes the BBC’s authority to subpoena people in Trump’s inner circle, including Donald Trump Jr., Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller, over his actual intentions on January 6, and separately granted part of a related BBC request for January 6 documents while denying the rest.
Read: A $10 Billion Defamation Suit Is Becoming a January 6 Discovery Nightmare for Trump
Lawyers for the network argue Trump’s own financial records will undercut his lawsuit, showing his net worth grew by more than $1 billion over the past year instead of shrinking the way his business-harm claim implies.
Trump’s lawyers didn’t wait for the written order to dodge disclosure. At the July 21 hearing itself, they argued Trump’s claims had “evolved” to cover only personal reputational harm, not financial damage to his companies, a shift that would have gutted the basis for the subpoena entirely. BBC attorney Chuck Tobin pushed back, and Lett rejected the argument, finding no grounds to strip business-damage allegations from a complaint that had already put them front and center.
Trump’s team may still attempt a more formal version of this maneuver, reportedly weighing an actual amendment to the complaint that would drop the economic-harm claims outright.
They can also still appeal the order to US District Judge Roy Altman, who’s overseeing the underlying case and has penciled in a two-week trial for February 2027. Separately, the BBC wants to depose Trump under oath, and Tobin has told the court Trump’s side has been slow to lock in a date.
