Welcome to Thursday’s edition of Washington Secrets, where we go inside Donald Trump’s legal battle with the BBC. We hear that his court victory today could pave the way for an even bigger damages claim.
Today was meant to be the day that President Donald Trump began handing over business records as part of a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the BBC.
He claimed the broadcaster’s mis-editing of his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, damaged his interests to the tune of $10 billion.
But in order to prove it, a Florida court said he would have to allow the BBC’s lawyers to sift through his financial records so they could mount a defense. The likely result was that tantalizing details of revenues, membership fees, hotel room occupancies, and suchlike would end up in the public record as court filings.
For once, it seemed that Trump may have bitten off more than he could chew in his war against legacy broadcasters.
That changed this week when Trump launched an eleventh-hour appeal to pause discovery, and his lawyers adopted a new strategy, one that would focus purely on the harm to his reputation.
On Thursday, deadline day, Trump and his lawyers won the battle.
U.S. District Judge Roy Altman ordered a pause to give Trump and his team time to file an amended complaint, one focused on the hit to the president’s reputation rather than on financial damage to companies in his family-owned trust.
“This is a compelling argument,” said Altman in his order. “If the Plaintiff’s amendment obviates the need to compel a non-party to disclose confidential financial information, we think it’s prudent to enter a brief stay of the Order until the amendment request is resolved.”
In English, that means Altman is pausing a lower court’s order for the Trump trust to hand over records so that the president’s lawyers can rewrite their complaint against the BBC. And if the new complaint doesn’t mention the business damages, then there is no need for the trust to hand over financial documents to the BBC.
The corporation is under fire for the way it edited together two different parts of Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, shortly before his supporters overran the U.S. Capitol. The end result was that it appeared as if the president had urged the crowd to attack Congress on the day it certified his election defeat.
The BBC has apologized, and two senior figures resigned amid the controversy. But its lawyers argue the defamation suit has no merit.
Either way, Trump’s attorneys argued Wednesday that the BBC had demanded a “shockingly broad amount of information based on clearly political motivations” and called for enforcement of the lower court’s order to be halted.
Trump opponents were salivating at the prospect of the president’s finances being laid bare. Details of some 400 entities would have been handed over.
While no one knows Trump’s exact net worth, recent financial disclosures have revealed that he made more than $2.2 billion during the first year of his second term.
Trump’s lawyers have not commented on their win. But Secrets suspects they will be encouraged by a judge leaning their way at a crucial moment. (Altman was appointed by Trump in April 2019, but has stuck strictly to the law in this case, which has opened Trump to setbacks.)
And by switching to a purely reputational case, several legal minds tell Secrets that Trump could even now seek greater damages when his lawyers file their amended case.
It is just the latest twist in a case where, last month, it looked as if Trump may have met his match.
Remembering when Fauci critics were his cheerleaders
Marc Short was Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, which gave him a front-row seat at meetings of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. In a new blog post, he writes that he was often at odds with Dr. Anthony Fauci, but he explains he is flabbergasted by the revisionist view of history now being taken up by many commentators, who fail to note that the Trump administration was not behind federal pandemic measures.
It is timely reading on the day that a Senate committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer questions last week.
“Under President Joe Biden, Dr. Fauci was given greater authority to make not only healthcare recommendations but also policy decisions that should belong to the state and local leaders,” Short writes. “He has become a political target for many elected republicans, but it’s important to remember that some of the most vocal proponents of draconian lockdowns, mask mandates, and even school closings were on the right.”
And he singles out three key figures, pointing out how their stances changed.
Steven Bannon: By April, Bannon was actively defending social separation, telling his listeners, “We don’t think they’re draconian when you look at what the alternatives are.”
Tucker Carlson: He explicitly attacked those who compared the virus to the flu, insisting it was a “very serious problem” and a “major event” that would inevitably disrupt every life in the country.
JD Vance: Questioned whether “the most important question in our public life is whether we should be allowed to eat at restaurants that many would avoid anyways,” and argued that “while we debate lockdowns, we spend precious time and political capital focused on something limited in both damage and duration.” Rather than defending the economic liberty of his own constituents, he spent the most critical window of the pandemic validating the heavy-handedness of the very bureaucrats he now claims to oppose.
Lunchtime reading
Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace issues first building contract – for a military base: The contract, which has not yet been finalized, was awarded to Arkel International, a Louisiana-based firm that has previously carried out work with the U.S. government in countries such as Iraq.
Why you shouldn’t be surprised if Democrats don’t flip the House: There’s still a long way to go in this race, and it is not a given that Democrats will win the House, according to this analysis.
You are reading Washington Secrets, a guide to power and politics in D.C. and beyond. It is written by Rob Crilly, who you can reach at [email protected] with your comments, story tips, and suggestions. If a friend sent you this and you’d like to sign up, click here.