Main: President Donald Trump boards Air Force One, Wednesday, May 20, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md., en route to speak at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy commencement. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin). Inset right: Judge Jeffrey Kuntz (4th District Court of Appeal).
The federal judge newly assigned to President Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit quashed the British Broadcasting Corporation’s subpoena of Cassidy Hutchinson on Thursday, noting that the former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who testified before the Jan. 6 Committee is the “subject” of a DOJ criminal probe.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Kuntz said in a brief order issued Thursday that while the BBC would like to learn more about the “mindset of President Trump and his closest advisors” on Jan. 6, Hutchinson’s testimony “seems largely irrelevant to the narrow issue in this lawsuit,” among other serious problems.
The BBC subpoenaed Hutchinson to help show that Trump can’t “prove that he did not foment or incite the January 6 Capitol riot,” but Kuntz said the defendants are trying to “relitigate and discover every aspect of the events of January 6, 2021.”
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“That is what the BBC attempts to do with Ms. Hutchinson,” the Trump-appointed judge said, adding that “this case is about a documentary aired by the BBC and, specifically, an allegation that the BBC ‘spliced’ two statements together that were actually made more than 55 minutes apart.”
Beyond that, Hutchinson may have legal exposure as the “subject” of a Trump DOJ criminal investigation, making the subpoena one that “definitively” and “unnecessarily burdens a non-party such as Ms. Hutchinson.”
Cassidy Hutchinson, a top former aide to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testifies during the sixth hearing by the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 insurrection in the Cannon House Office Building on June 28, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images).
“Ms. Hutchinson testified for over thirty hours under oath before Congress. Her sworn testimony is available to both parties in this lawsuit. And, her testimony seems largely irrelevant to the narrow issue in this lawsuit,” the judge explained, telling both sides not to turn discovery into a “fishing expedition.”
“Now, facing a potential criminal investigation, Ms. Hutchinson has other reasons to avoid the deposition. And, the changes in circumstances mean she would invoke her rights under the Fifth Amendment if she was compelled to testify,” Kuntz said.
At the same time, the jurist left open the possibility that circumstances will change. If so, the BBC “must explain in great detail the specific circumstances that changed” which justify a “new subpoena.”
Trump sued the BBC for $10 billion over the documentary “Trump: A Second Chance” after the BBC admitted the piece “gave the mistaken impression that [he] had made a direct call for violent action” on Jan. 6 by editing “excerpts from different points” of the president’s speech from the Ellipse out of sequence.
The BBC countered with 47 subpoenas of third parties, seeking “[a]ll Documents and Communications Concerning the attack on the U.S. Capitol following the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally on January 6, 2021” — the “same records” former special counsel Jack Smith used against Trump in his dismissed Jan. 6 conspiracy prosecution.
A separate fight is ongoing in Washington, D.C., over the unsealing of executive privilege determinations from Smith’s grand jury probe, all geared toward defeating Trump’s case on the merits.
When Kuntz served as a Florida state appellate judge, he allowed the president’s “Russiagate” lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize board to move forward. Later, an ethics complaint alleged that Kuntz expressed interest in a lifetime judgeship in outreach to GOP Sen. Rick Scott while the appeal was pending in his court.
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