I am having a VERY successful day, perhaps the most successful day in the history of days involving a court order, because a Miami judge said I have to hand over financial records and my lawyers are trying to stop it. This is not a setback. It is a BEAUTIFUL legal maneuver, the kind of maneuver that people say only the greatest dealmakers understand. The deadline is 6 August, which is soon, but I knew this was going to happen before anybody else knew it was going to happen.
A judge ruled in July that I must begin producing detailed records in my $10bn case against the BBC, including information about hundreds of businesses held through my family trust. I say “must” is a very weak word. The order is not really an order. It is a suggestion. A low-energy suggestion. I have seen stronger suggestions from people who were later described as very disloyal. This is the financial-records order I already defeated by winning it, exactly as I always said, even though I said something completely different before.
My lawyers are making an 11th-hour request to temporarily pause enforcement and change the lawsuit so it focuses on “reputation harm,” where the disclosures can be kept proportional to the needs of the case. This is exactly the kind of brilliant legal strategy that people later describe as obvious, once I have already done it. We are narrowing the case by making it larger. We are protecting the records by stopping the records. We are winning by asking not to lose. Many people, very smart people, are saying this. The best people.
The BBC wants details about hundreds of businesses connected to a family trust because I sued the broadcaster for $10bn over a documentary about the 2021 Capitol attack. The documentary edited together lines from my 6 January 2021 speech in a way that made me appear to directly urge my supporters to attack the Capitol. The BBC apologized for the edit while saying the defamation claims have no merit, which is a very strange way to apologize and also be wrong, but these are the kinds of things that happen when you are dealing with a broadcaster that has never made a deal as tremendous as mine.
The BBC says it needs financial information to examine my claim of financial harm. I say financial information is private unless it helps me prove my $10bn claim, in which case it is public, historic and the greatest claim in the history of claims. I am completely self-made. Completely. With only the smallest possible assistance from the family circumstances that made the self-made part possible. Financial disclosures showed that I had made more than $2.2bn during my first year back in office, which is a very modest number for me. The records may show hundreds of businesses held through my family trust, but that is only because I created the conditions under which the records could exist. I had nothing to do with the money, except for the parts where I made the money. Tremendous deal!
Now the BBC is demanding a shockingly broad amount of information for clearly political reasons. Political! They want the financial records, and apparently they want to know what the financial records say. This is called harassment when it happens to me and discovery when it happens to somebody else. Very simple. Very fair. I am the most transparent person in the world, which is why I am asking the court to keep the windows closed.
The network says it did not use AI to insert words into my speech, a claim it categorically denies. That is fine because I understand the DEAL. If the edit is real, I am a victim. If the edit is not real, the denial proves the BBC is hiding something. And if the court wants the records, that proves the BBC is afraid of the records. Perfect logic. Very high-level logic. The financial records are about the lawsuit, the lawsuit is about the documentary, the documentary is about the speech, and the speech is still doing an extraordinary amount of work for a speech delivered on 6 January 2021.
The Wall Street Journal has a $10bn case too, over a bawdy letter I reportedly included in a 2003 birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein, and my Justice Department issued and then recalled subpoenas to New York Times journalists after reporting about security concerns involving Air Force One. These are not connected events. They are connected only in the sense that they all prove I am being treated UNFAIRLY by people who keep writing things down. The judges write things down. The BBC writes things down. The newspapers write things down. I am surrounded by people with records, which is why the records must be stopped immediately.
I had nothing to do with the court order, except that I am the reason everybody is talking about it. I had nothing to do with the BBC wanting the records, except that I gave them the most important records in the world by bringing the lawsuit. I had nothing to do with the number $10bn, except that it is the smallest amount that accurately describes the damage to my reputation, my businesses, my family trust, my presidency and my speech. I did not lose access to the records. I am fighting access to the records, which is different because the fight itself is a victory.
I know exactly what I am doing. I knew this court order would happen before anybody else knew it was going to happen, and I knew I would oppose it before I knew the BBC would ask for the records, and I knew the records would be the best records before I knew what was in them. Diklis Chump did this. Very few people could have done it, believe me. I have the greatest financial memory, the greatest legal memory, the greatest memory of all time — what was I just saying? The BBC is losing. The judge is losing. The records are winning. The records are me. It is a PERFECT victory. The best kind. The kind where the records stay private for as long as my lawyers can keep asking the court to pause the order, and the world learns how much I won by keeping them private.