President Donald Trump was repeatedly beaten by special counsel Jack Smith in hidden court proceedings, and now the president's $10 billion BBC lawsuit threatens to backfire and expose how it was done.
The BBC filed a reply brief Wednesday in federal court in Washington, pressing Chief Judge James Boasberg to unseal rulings from the Smith grand jury probe in which courts rejected Trump's attempts to shield witnesses from testifying under presidential executive privilege.
Trump filed the underlying $10 billion defamation suit in December 2025, claiming the BBC deceptively edited his Jan. 6, 2021, Ellipse speech in a Panorama documentary to make it appear he incited the Capitol riot. Trial is set for February 2027.
According to the Smith report, courts rejected Trump's executive privilege claims across five sealed proceedings between August 2022 and March 2023, covering 14 witnesses in total. The courts "uniformly rejected" every assertion, Smith's team wrote, allowing investigators to obtain testimony from senior White House staff and executive branch officials.
Now Trump is asserting the same privilege claims again — this time to block the BBC from reaching those same witnesses, the same evidence, and the same conclusion about Jan. 6 incitement, the reply brief argues.
The BBC told Boasberg it would be a fundamental injustice to let Trump hide behind "already-rejected privilege claims to withhold such vital information."
The Justice Department told Boasberg last week it opposes further disclosure, arguing unsealing could deter future grand jury witnesses from testifying — a rationale the BBC's filing dismisses, noting it is not seeking witness testimony but rulings on whether witnesses could testify at all.
On Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett ruled Trump must hand over financial records tied to more than 400 companies held in a family trust, Politico reported.
"You cannot separate the man and his reputation from the operation of his businesses," BBC attorney Chuck Tobin told the court.
Trump's team has also stalled on scheduling the president's deposition, according to Politico.
BBC Studios was dismissed as a defendant on July 16. The suit now targets only the BBC itself, with trial set for February 2027.
