Judge orders Trump deposition in $10 billion BBC lawsuit

A federal judge in Florida has ordered President Donald Trump to sit for a deposition by Dec. 11 in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, warning that failure to cooperate with the case could lead to sanctions, including dismissal.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett issued the order Thursday after BBC lawyers accused Trump of delaying his deposition and failing to turn over relevant documents. Trump had been scheduled to testify on Oct. 16 but canceled, citing what his lawyers called “other matters of national importance.”

BBC attorney Charles Tobin said Trump instead attended a political rally and a fundraiser, according to NBC News. “He was participating in party politics and prioritized that over sitting for the deposition,” Tobin said. At the hearing, Trump attorney Alejandro Brito said the president was “involved in a host of things” each day that the BBC’s lawyers “has no idea” about, The Guardian reported.

The lawsuit concerns a BBC Panorama documentary that spliced together comments Trump made during a speech on Jan. 6, 2021, before the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump alleges the documentary presented a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction” of him. The BBC acknowledges that it spliced comments from the speech but maintains that it did not defame Trump and that he suffered no damages.

The Guardian reported that the broadcast was not readily available to view in Florida, where Trump’s legal team argues he was personally harmed under the state’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

The deposition dispute was one part of a broader hearing on evidence-gathering in the case. According to The Guardian, Lett rejected Trump’s request to prevent the seven-hour deposition from being videotaped. The recording will be accessible only to attorneys in the case.

Lett also sided with BBC lawyers who said Trump’s team had not adequately produced internal documents before a Dec. 18 deadline for the evidence-gathering process known as discovery. “They have produced absolutely nothing of any substance,” Tobin told the court, according to The Guardian. The documents provided so far had largely come from the internet or the BBC itself, the newspaper reported.

“It strains credulity that a thorough search has been done in order to determine that all of these requests have been responded to,” Lett told Brito, according to The Guardian. “The court is not satisfied that anyone is doing a thorough job.” She gave Trump’s team 30 days to produce relevant documents.

Lett said the process could be “burdensome” for both sides, but warned that continued failure to cooperate could result in sanctions, including dismissal. “This is the last opportunity to do so,” she said. The Guardian reported that the discovery timetable could be extended by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey T. Kuntz, and that BBC lawyers would accept a later deposition date if he changed the schedule.

NBC News said the White House referred its request for comment to Trump’s personal legal team, which did not immediately respond.