Trump's detour to avoid discovery of finances in own lawsuit will actually 'help' his opponent in a 'substantial' way: Judge

When discovery got too close for comfort in his own $10-billion defamation lawsuit, President Donald Trump tried to fix his complaint against the British Broadcasting Corporation. A judge in Florida has now allowed the move but cautioned it "will, in some respects, help the BBC" and may not yield Trump the complete "avoidance of financial discovery" he would like.

The BBC said Trump's removal of business damages and newfound focus only on reputational harm was a transparent effort to wall off "sensitive" documents from discovery, as evidenced by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust's "emergency" bid to prevent disclosure of "confidential tax, ownership, and financial records for approximately 400 entities." But in a brief order on Monday, U.S. District Judge Roy Altman explained that Trump established "good cause" to amend his lawsuit.

The judge, a Trump appointee, said last week that "careful review" led him to stay a discovery deadline until the president's motion to amend was "resolved." Altman has since concluded that information Trump's lawyers only learned during jurisdiction-related discovery gave him "good cause" to add "facts" that the BBC's Panorama documentary, "Trump: A Second Chance," was viewed in Florida.

"The Plaintiff contends that he satisfies Rule 16(b)'s good-cause requirement because he didn't have the information he needed for his proposed amendment until after the deadline had expired," the judge said. "The record confirms this."

Altman pointed to the "facts" that the BBC's "own data reflect at least 34 successful play starts attributed to Florida, and that the BBC received contemporaneous notice that its geo-blocking was failing." Earlier in the case, the BBC sought dismissal for lack of jurisdiction because the defendants "did not create" the documentary "in Florida, produce [it] in Florida, or air [it] in Florida."

Overall, Trump has alleged that the documentary harmed him by editing together "excerpts from different points" of his Jan. 6 speech from the Ellipse out of sequence, even though, by the BBC's own admission, it "unintentionally created the […] mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action."

"The injury to President Trump's personal reputation inflicted by BBC and its efforts to wrongly portray President Trump as a violent insurrectionist has caused him to suffer, and continue to suffer, overwhelming reputational harm," Trump's amended complaint reads. "Exacerbating the damages, Defendant made its false, deceptive, malicious, and defamatory depiction of President Trump in bad faith, motivated by malice and ill-will against President Trump without any regard for the truth, and contrary to information Defendant possessed that showed its depiction to be false, or, at minimum, should have raised, and did raise, serious doubts that the depiction could possibly be true (which it was not)."

But if Trump's lawyers thought "simply" focusing on the "reputational injury to the President, full stop" would make discovery concerns vanish entirely, the judge said that "won't necessarily" be the case.

"The BBC also writes: '[The] Plaintiff's proposed amended Complaint is futile because it cannot even secure him the goal he seeks: avoidance of financial discovery.' We agree in part and disagree in part with this assertion," Altman said. "We agree that an amended complaint won't necessarily obviate the need for certain financial disclosures—especially since the amended complaint retains the Plaintiff's original $10-billion damages demand. But we disagree that the Motion's potential futility as it pertains to this discovery issue is the kind of merits-based futility Rule 15 is primarily concerned with."

"In any event, we think the Plaintiff's proposed amendment will, in some respects, help the BBC," Altman added later, explaining that Trump's decision to drop business-related claims "represents a substantial diminution in the scope of the available damages."

That's even more true when you consider the new complaint "removes several contested allegations, not to mention two defendants," and streamlines the case in a way that "allow[s] the BBC's re-filed motion to dismiss to focus more squarely on its most important arguments," the judge said.

Regardless, Trump faces a formidable burden as a public figure who must prove actual malice.

Trump's team maintains that a "damning and recently leaked BBC internal whistleblower document" will help them show the BBC "intentionally used the Panorama Documentary to maliciously, falsely, and defamatorily make it seem that President Trump explicitly called for violent action and rioting."

"[C]oncerns about the Panorama Documentary were raised internally before its dissemination, but the BBC ignored those concerns and did not take corrective action," the complaint alleged.