The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!
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BBC admits it botched Trump’s Jan. 6 speech — now it wants his family under subpoena

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BS BULLETIN

  • The BBC wants testimony and records from Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner as it fights Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit.
  • The BBC has already admitted its edit gave the “mistaken impression” Trump directly called for violence.
  • The disputed clip joined remarks delivered nearly an hour apart.

The BBC has a new strategy for defending itself against Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit over its infamous editing of his January 6 speech:

Bring in the family.

The British broadcaster is trying to subpoena Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner for testimony and documents as it prepares its defense against the president’s massive lawsuit.

According to court filings reported Friday, BBC attorneys contend all three “without question have personal knowledge” relevant to Trump’s intentions and actions surrounding his January 6, 2021, speech.

But there’s a rather enormous fact hanging over this entire legal battle. The BBC has already admitted the edit was wrong.

In a November apology, BBC Chairman Samir Shah acknowledged that the editing created a “misleading impression” of Trump’s remarks and wrongly made them appear to be a single continuous statement.

Even more damaging, Shah conceded the edit gave the “mistaken impression” that Trump had made a direct call for violent action. That’s quite an admission considering the documentary aired shortly before the 2024 presidential election.

The Panorama program stitched together portions of Trump’s January 6 speech delivered almost an hour apart. The resulting clip made Trump appear to tell supporters:

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol…”

followed by:

“We fight. We fight like hell.”

Those weren’t consecutive statements. And something else disappeared in the editing process: Trump’s instruction that supporters should march to the Capitol to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Trump’s federal complaint specifically cites that omitted language.

That’s not a minor correction involving somebody’s middle initial. That’s an editorial decision affecting the meaning viewers could reasonably take from one of the most consequential speeches in modern American political history. And eventually the BBC itself admitted it.

The fallout was extraordinary.

BBC Director-General Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness both resigned as the controversy engulfed the broadcaster. BBC Chairman Shah publicly apologized for the editing, and the BBC said it would not rebroadcast the documentary in that form. Trump then sued.

His complaint, filed in federal court in Florida, seeks at least $5 billion for defamation and another $5 billion under Florida’s unfair trade practices law — hence the eye-popping $10 billion figure.

The BBC isn’t conceding the legal case. Far from it. The broadcaster argues that admitting an editorial mistake doesn’t establish the elements Trump must prove to win a defamation lawsuit.

Among its defenses, the BBC contends that the documentary wasn’t broadcast in Florida — or anywhere else in the United States — and that Trump therefore cannot establish the necessary jurisdiction or damages.

Its March court filing says the program aired on British television and the U.K. version of iPlayer, wasn’t made available to American viewers through BBC.com or BritBox, and that a shorter version distributed internationally didn’t contain the disputed January 6 edit.

According to the BBC’s attorneys, Don Jr. and Ivanka were present while their father worked on the January 6 speech and were present when he delivered it. Kushner, meanwhile, allegedly helped prepare a statement condemning the violence after trouble erupted at the Capitol.

The broadcaster apparently believes their testimony could help establish Trump’s intentions that day — and potentially undermine his claim that the documentary falsely portrayed those intentions.

Actually getting subpoenas into their hands has proved rather more difficult.

An attempt to serve Ivanka and Kushner at their Miami home in May was unsuccessful after police intervened, according to reports. The Secret Service subsequently told BBC attorneys it wasn’t authorized to accept the subpoenas for them or advise the lawyers how to accomplish service.

An attempt to serve Don Jr. at Trump Tower also failed.

The BBC has now asked the federal court in Miami to permit alternative service — including by mail — or to deem service through Trump’s attorneys sufficient.

And so we have reached the rather remarkable point where a British broadcaster that admittedly created a misleading edit of Donald Trump’s speech is now fighting to put his children and son-in-law under oath to help defend itself.

Only in the Trump era.

MY QUICK TAKE:

There’s something revealing about the BBC wanting Trump’s family members to explain what Trump really intended on January 6.

Excuse me, but wasn’t that precisely why editing his actual words accurately was so important in the first place?

If you’re going to tell millions of viewers what a president supposedly meant during one of the most scrutinized events in American history, perhaps Step One should be: Don’t splice together remarks delivered almost an hour apart and make them sound continuous.

And perhaps Step Two should be: Don’t remove the part where he says “peacefully and patriotically.”

The courtroom will determine whether any of that is worth $10 billion.

Maybe Trump wins. Maybe the BBC wins on jurisdiction or another legal defense. Maybe the damages demand gets laughed into another solar system. That’s what courts are for.

But the journalism question is considerably easier.

The BBC didn’t need Don Jr., Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner to know what Donald Trump said. They had the tape.

They should have played it straight.

DBS WIRE SOURCES:

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