Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are suddenly at the center of a legal showdown involving President Donald Trump’s controversial Jan. 6 speech — with BBC lawyers claiming the powerful couple has been nearly impossible to serve with subpoenas.
The British broadcaster is fighting Trump’s defamation lawsuit over a 2024 documentary about the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, and its attorneys say Trump’s eldest daughter and her husband could possess crucial information about what the president intended to say that day.
But there’s one major problem: The BBC says it can’t get the paperwork into their hands.
According to a court filing submitted Friday in federal court in Miami, process servers attempting to reach Ivanka and Kushner at their Florida home were allegedly stopped by law enforcement officers because the couple remains protected by the U.S. Secret Service as members of the sitting president’s immediate family.
The BBC has also struggled to serve Donald Trump Jr., unsuccessfully attempting to reach him at Trump Organization offices inside Trump Tower in New York.
Attorneys for the broadcaster argue that all three family members could be important witnesses.
“The third parties have personal knowledge and likely have possession, custody, or control of records relevant to multiple elements of Plaintiff’s claims against the BBC,” the lawyers wrote.
The filing specifically argues that Ivanka, Kushner and Don Jr. could know important details about Trump’s mindset and intentions before his now-infamous speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6.
BBC lawyers are seeking information from people who were around Trump while the speech was being drafted and during the tense hours leading up to its delivery.
The broadcaster says traditional attempts to serve the subpoenas have gone nowhere.
“Law enforcement officers prevented the BBC’s process server from effecting service on Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump at their home in Florida, and directed the BBC to coordinate service through the U.S. Secret Service,” the filing states.
But that effort apparently hit another roadblock.
According to the filing, the Secret Service informed BBC attorneys that the agency could not accept the subpoenas on behalf of the Trump family members.
“The United States Secret Service, as an agency of the United States Government, is not authorized to accept service of these subpoenas for these individuals, nor can we opine on how you all may best facilitate or effectuate service of these subpoenas,” the agency’s general counsel reportedly said.
The BBC is now asking the judge for permission to serve Ivanka, Kushner and Don Jr. through alternative means, including by mail or another third-party method.
Trump’s legal team is opposing efforts to subpoena his children and son-in-law, according to the filing.
The legal fight stems from Trump’s lawsuit accusing the BBC of defaming him through the way it edited portions of his Jan. 6 speech.
In the documentary, the broadcaster combined separate portions of Trump’s remarks.
During the speech, Trump told supporters they would “walk down to the Capitol” and said he would be there with them. The BBC edited those remarks together so they appeared as one continuous statement.
Later in the roughly 55-minute speech, Trump delivered one of the most heavily scrutinized lines of his presidency.
“We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump told the crowd.
Hours of chaos followed as Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol while lawmakers were meeting to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
The BBC has acknowledged that its editing of Trump’s remarks was improper and apologized for it.
But the broadcaster maintains that the disputed edit does not justify Trump’s defamation lawsuit.
Now the fight could put members of Trump’s own family under oath — potentially forcing Ivanka, Kushner and Don Jr. to answer questions about what they knew regarding Trump’s plans, his speech and his intentions before one of the most consequential days in modern American political history.
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Jan. 6th wasn’t an “attack”, just a peaceful protest with no fires like the Democrats were setting, plus a couple broken windows… no cops died that day… cops shot an unarmed peaceful war hero veteran lady to death… beat another peaceful unarmed lady to death…
They want to know what Trump intended to say? But didn’t?
She\’s a disgrace to America just like her dad and her husband is even worse.