Has the BBC Trapped Trump in Court?

Hi, my name's Phil.I like talking about politics.So, interesting development in Trump's defamation case against the BBC.Trump is claiming that the BBC harmed his businesses, so the BBC have asked for financial details, something Trump has avoided allowing to be seen in public for years now.Have the BBC got him a bit trapped here?So let's just remind ourselves of the background here.

So the BBC, the Panorama programme, caught some footage of Trump around the time of the 2020 attack on Capitol Hill, you know, the insurrection organised by Trump supporters, in which it's argued viewers could be misled about the sequence of events and Trump's direct involvement.

They have apologised, but Trump is trying to sue them for $10 billion.However, Trump is trying to sue them in Florida, as it's the only court he stands any chance in.

But as the programme wasn't aired anywhere in America, the BBC are arguing that the Florida court has no jurisdiction.Trump is also trying to change the judge, because his team don't think she'll do what they want.However, in news today, there was something else.The Trump case accuses the BBC of causing the Orange One reputational and financial injury.Now, the reputational injury, a little bit tricky because the programme never aired in his own country.

But the financial injury, very specific and should be easy to prove, right?The BBC's legal team certainly seem to think so.

All right, they said, hand over your financial records to prove it.I mean, this is what's called the discovery period of the legal process.Each side asks for documents from the other side.But whereas the BBC have been handing over the documents required of them, Trump's team have not.They want documents which show the holdings and value assets, inventories and lists of properties held according to the Financial Times, as well as anything associated with trusts and tax returns.Now, this seems reasonable enough.

If you're going to claim that financial injury was done to your businesses by this programme, you're going to have to prove it with financial documents which show that the value was lost directly caused by the programme.Not just that you've moved assets around, as tax dodging investors often do, or due to some other circumstances, right?But Trump's team seem a little bit reluctant.I'm not surprised.Trump has been dodging financial accountability for years.Like he said he would publish his tax returns ahead of his first presidential win.

He never did.Not many years later, I think a court managed to grab some, but he has never published these things.

Handing over all of this financial information, which includes tax returns, to the BBC would be the stuff of nightmares for Trump.Yet how on earth does he imagine he can prove his case without it?Is he expecting them to just trust him?I guess that's it, isn't it?He's just hoping to get a judge who will just blindly and corruptly do whatever Trump wants.Hilariously, Trump's team have accused the BBC of only requesting these documents as a phishing exercise.

Now, this is where you want the opposing side to hand over, like, literally everything.Not because there's something in there that you think is going to back up your case, but just because you hope to find something incriminating that helps you.But this is exactly what Trump's team have done with the BBC.They have requested shed loads of documents from them, which have got not very much to do with the production of the programme at all.They're just hoping they can find something incriminating.After all, they claim the offending BBC Panorama programme maliciously doctored the footage, which is fairly crucial to prove if you're going to get anywhere with defamation cases as far as I'm aware.

You have to prove malice, but they have no proof of malice.So they've requestedtens of thousands of documents from the BBC hoping to find a smoking gun and the BBC have handed them over.Not sure if they should have waited for the Trump team to fork over their documents first or maybe there's actually nothing to hide in their own documents so they don't really care and they don't want to piss off the judge.Unlike Trump, who is not only refusing to hand over fairly obvious evidence of his claims, but has accused the presiding judge of being either corrupt or incompetent.After all, why else would you want the judge replaced?

But assuming Trump can't actually get a judge bent enough to find in his favour for a case where, first of all, I think it is probably fairly obvious there's no jurisdiction, and without any evidence of the claims, this could be tricky for him.The claim of malice can't be proven without documentary evidence that someone involved in the production explicitly wanted to give a false impression.that will either be found or it won't.If there genuinely was no malice it won't be found because there'll be nothing in there.The fact the BBC have handed over documents and nothing has been reported on such a smoking gun suggests if the document exists it hasn't yet been discovered by Trump's team.The claim of financial injury cannot be proven without financial records.

Trump doesn't want his financial records being seen in court or by journalists.So handing them over to journalists in court seems spectacularly unlikely.

Like, unless the orange one actually manages to set up a proper kangaroo court here, it's looking like he's on a hiding to nothing.

He's managed to bluff other media outlets into backing down so far.Maybe that was the plan.Maybe he just thought they would back down like all the others have.but he may have met the immovable object here.Trump may well be heading for a couple of years of defeats in court and the political arena before finally having to exit the scene in failure.The lesson here which which nepo babies tend not to learn.

is pick your battles.What do you think?Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.Please subscribe to the channel for more content.Click the bell notification icon so you know when new videos are out.Thanks for watching and until next time, I'll see you later.