Trump's $10B revenge case unraveling as BBC says his 'own expert' may serve death blow

The BBC told a federal court that President Donald Trump’s own expert’s report backs its bid to see the finances he has tried to shield in his $10 billion lawsuit.

In a motion filed Wednesday, the BBC said Trump served an expert report on his alleged damages on Oct. 30 and marked it confidential. The network asked to file it under seal.

The BBC wrote that “the Plaintiff’s own expert’s report provides further support” for its pending requests for damages-related records from Trump and from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust.

Trump’s lawyers objected to the BBC’s “statements and characterizations” about the report’s relevance, the motion said, but they did not oppose sealing it.

Trump has fought for months to keep his finances out of the case.

In July, Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett ruled that his claims of harm to his “brand, properties, and businesses” entitled the BBC to records from the trust, which she said owns nearly all of those businesses. The order covered tax returns, financial statements, and ownership records for roughly 400 companies.

At a July 21 hearing, Trump lawyer Alejandro Brito said the case had “evolved” and now sought damages only for harm to Trump’s personal reputation. In August, a judge paused Lett’s order and let Trump file a narrower complaint. Trump argues that complaint means the BBC no longer needs the trust’s records.

The new complaint still seeks “not less than $10,000,000,000,” Lett noted in an Oct. 27 order. It also says the broadcast hurt Trump “in his profession, occupation, and trade.”

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Kuntz, a Trump appointee, ruled that the defamation claim can go forward but dismissed a separate claim under Florida’s unfair trade practices law. Whether Trump can “establish he sustained damages,” Kuntz wrote, “is left for another day.”

So the report Trump served to prove those damages is now part of the BBC’s case for the records he says his narrower complaint put off-limits.

The BBC says narrowing the complaint does not take Trump’s businesses out of the fight.

“You cannot separate the man and his reputation from his operation of his businesses,” BBC attorney Chuck Tobin told the court in July.

“I became president because of my brand,” Trump testified at his 2023 civil fraud trial in New York, where he called the brand his most valuable asset.

By his own account, the same brand carries both his political standing and his fortune.

In January, the BBC argued that Trump could not prove harm, noting that he won reelection a week after the broadcast and “carried Florida by a commanding 13-point margin.”

Forbes estimates Trump’s fortune has since grown to $7 billion, up about $2.7 billion since he returned to office.

“Well, so did everyone’s,” Trump told CBS News’ 60 Minutes on Sunday when asked about the Forbes estimate.

Measured by votes or by money, Trump has come out ahead since the broadcast he says harmed him.

It is not the first time a Trump libel suit has put his own finances under oath. In 2006, he sued Timothy O’Brien, then a New York Times business reporter, demanding $5 billion over a book that put his fortune at $150 million to $250 million.

“My net worth fluctuates ... with feelings, even my own feelings,” Trump said in a 2007 deposition in that case. A judge threw out the suit in 2009.

In the BBC case, Lett has given the network until Nov. 17 to answer Trump’s argument over the trust’s records. She will then rule or hold a hearing on whether to revive her July order and open the trust’s books to the BBC.