Left: President Donald Trump speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon). Right: Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg speaks on a panel in April 2025 at an American Bar Association meeting (PBS NewsHour/YouTube).
Lawyers for President Donald Trump and the DOJ appeared in court on Tuesday morning for a high-stakes subpoena fight, urging Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg not to aid the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in its defense.
The dispute centers in part on a subpoena to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, in an ongoing matter in Washington, D.C., seeking to unseal 2022 court opinions regarding executive and attorney-client privilege and Jan. 6.
Trump sued the BBC over “Trump: A Second Chance” in December 2025 after the BBC admitted the documentary “gave the mistaken impression that [he] had made a direct call for violent action” on Jan. 6. The BBC edited “excerpts from different points” of the president’s speech from the Ellipse out of sequence, so Trump sued for $10 billion in the Southern District of Florida for defamation.
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The president’s lack of participation in discovery, now and in the coming weeks, could lead to dismissal as a sanction. Discovery is set to close on Dec. 18 — a fact that “surprised” Boasberg.
“My surprise here is that I can’t believe that the discovery deadline is coming up in five and a half weeks,” he said during the hearing Tuesday.
A moment later, Boasberg turned to DOJ attorney Jeremy Newman, questioning him about redactions in documents that “cite to the House Select Committee hearings” on Jan. 6.
“Weren’t those public hearings?” he asked.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Newman answered.
“What was the basis of redacting all of those sections?” Boasberg followed up.
The DOJ lawyer said he believed those redactions generally related to “grand jury matters.”
“It’s not cited that way,” the judge said. “It’s all cited to HSC, so I have to say that you might want to take another look at some of that, because it doesn’t seem to me that these are proper redactions.”
“Looks like it’s overredacted to me,” Boasberg added, before again saying it “seems remarkable” that the discovery deadline in Florida has not moved and the court there hasn’t ruled on executive privilege issues.
If the deadline does stay put, the judge said, “I’ll know I need to rule quickly.”
The BBC, noting Trump is “the most central figure in this case,” has said the president’s deposition is essential to its defense in the Florida lawsuit because he must “prove that he did not foment the January 6 Capitol riot.”
To bolster that case, the defendant separately asked Boasberg to unseal, to the “greatest extent possible,” the “fact-specific rationale” as to “why” various executive privilege rulings went against Trump during special counsel Jack Smith’s grand jury probe.
The DOJ has moved to quash the Cipollone subpoena, however, stating the attorney was “not authorized” to testify or hand over the requested documents — with the Trump administration trying to block a media defendant from obtaining records that could help it defeat Trump’s own lawsuit.
In early September, Boasberg said the BBC “made convincing arguments” and had a “decent chance” of getting what it sought if the documents turned out to be “necessary.”
The standard, the Barack Obama-appointed jurist observed at the time, “requires a need to avoid a possible injustice in another judicial proceeding.”
Before joining the federal bench, Boasberg was appointed to the District of Columbia Superior Court by then-President George W. Bush.
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