Trump scrambling to keep damning 'on-point' evidence out of court: expert

Former special counsel Jack Smith attends a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., September 29, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci

President Donald Trump and his legal team are scrambling to stop the BBC from calling a major surprise witness in his ongoing defamation case, and as legal expert Lisa Rubin told MS NOW, it is seemingly because of the damningly "on-point" evidence they have to share.

Late last year, Trump sued the BBC, alleging defamation after the network aired a documentary in its Panorama series prior to the 2024 election, which touched on the January 6 Capitol riots. Trump's suit claimed that the footage of his speech to supporters prior to the attacks was selectively edited to make it appear as if he had directly asked his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol building, a claim the network has vigorously fought back against.

Currently, Trump and his team are fighting in court to prevent the BBC from calling former special counsel Jack Smith into court for testimony. Discussing the ongoing case during a Tuesday appearance on MS NOW, Rubin explained that Smith, as he has strongly implied in the past, might have key evidence that could blow up the president's argument against the BBC — and expose his connection to the Capitol riots in the process.

Rubin laid out the situation when pressed by host Alicia Menendez.

"This lawsuit issort of an unusual defamationcase because what it's about ishow the BBC edited togetherportions of the speech that Donald Trump gave at theEllipse on January 6th," Rubin said. "And in particular, he's saying thatthe way that the BBC edited itgave the false impression thathe directly called for violence.The BBC is saying, 'No, actually,even if the speech was editedtogether in a way that gavethat impression, if the speechas a whole not only gave thatimpression, but was his intent,it was never false to beginwith.'"

This, she noted, is where the evidence from Smith's extensive investigation of January 6 comes into play.

"And the greatest experton all of that is Jack Smith," Rubin continued. "Because even though we knowwhat his report says, he'snever disclosed the evidence onwhich it's based. But he hassaid publicly that he hasstrong evidence that Trump knewthe violence was foreseeable,that he caused it nonetheless,and then he leveraged it to tryand prevent the vote that day.And so if the core question iswhether the speech was false,then Jack Smith's evidence,according to the BBC, is veryon point and relevant towhether or not there was afalse statement."

Trump's team is attempting to argue that a legal rule precludes Smith from sharing information in court "because it wasdeveloped in the context of agrand jury." However, Rubin noted, there is another rule that allows grand jury evidence "to be discussedin other judicial proceedings."

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