A judge has granted Donald Trump’s request to delay handing over financial records to the BBC as part of his $10bn (£7.4bn) lawsuit against the broadcaster.
The US president is suing the BBC over an episode of Panorama that edited together two different sections of a speech he gave before the 2021 Capitol riots.
The BBC has asked for some of Trump’s financial records in relation to his argument that the documentary damaged the president’s business interests.
A judge granted that request in July and the first documents were due to be filed on Thursday, but another judge has now agreed to an emergency motion filed by Trump’s lawyers earlier this week to pause the disclosure.
The president’s legal team said disclosure of the financial records would cause him “irreparable harm”.
They argued that no such revelations should be made until the court rules on an objection to the order requiring the disclosure.
Trump has also recently asked to amend his main case, which his lawyers said would make the document release unnecessary.
The president has asked for his central complaint against the BBC to be amended so it no longer claims the documentary damaged his brands and businesses. His lawyers have asked that the case is amended to claim for damages for “the reputational injury to the President, full stop”.
In a ruling on Thursday, the judge said the order for financial information disclosure would be paused until the amendment question is resolved.
The BBC had said Trump’s request for a delay to disclosure was “a transparent effort to evade this court’s clear and direct order and to continue to avoid the discovery obligations that the plaintiff took on when he chose to file this lawsuit”.
“In fact, this is just the latest in [Trump’s] months-long refusal to provide documents, sworn answers to interrogatories, deposition dates, any meaningful information to support his pursuit of $10bn from the BBC for a documentary the BBC never aired in the United States.”
Trump’s lawsuit – filed in Florida – accuses the BBC of “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring” the speech he gave outside the Capitol on 6 January 2021.
The BBC has apologised for an editing error that gave “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”.
However, the BBC has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the programme doesn’t meet the legal criteria for defamation and wasn’t made available on its US platforms.
Last month, Trump’s lawyers admitted they had no evidence that the documentary was available in the US on the BBC’s BritBox subscription service, as they had originally claimed, or on BBC.com, BBC Select or through US broadcasters.
Trump also recently agreed to drop the BBC’s commercial arm BBC Studios from his lawsuit, after the BBC argued the company had “no role in creating or producing the documentary”.
