Trump ordered by judge to sit for deposition in $10bn lawsuit against the BBC

Trump had so far resisted requests for him to testify under oath in a deposition.

Ever since Trump filed his ludicrous $10bn claim against the BBC over the edit of a Panorama documentary, the broadcaster has refused to cow down to the US president’s bullying.

The BBC’s position is clear: if Trump wants to bring this case against them, they’re going to quite rightly take every measure in their power to defend themselves.

And from the way things are going, you wouldn’t think it was Trump who had brought the legal action, as he seems determined not to cooperate with proceedings.

Last week, it was revealed that the BBC had requested that Trump testify under oath as part of the discovery part of the case.

Trump’s legal team had so far managed to swerve the request, arguing that he could not make the original date for deposition due to “matters of national importance.”

But now, federal magistrate judge Enjoliqué Lett has ordered the president to sit for a deposition by 11 December, the Guardian reports.

Lett warned Trump he could be subject to sanctions, including the possible dismissal of the $10bn lawsuit, if he does not cooperate with the discovery process.

Lett also rejected the request by Trump’s legal team to prevent the seven-hour-long deposition from being videotaped, though it will only be accessible to attorneys in the case.

The judge also agreed with the BBC’s lawyers arguments that Trump’s team had not been sufficiently forthcoming in handing over internal documents relevant to the case ahead of an 18 December deadline for discovery.

Lett warned that failure to comply with the discovery process ” could result in sanctions, including possible dismissal of the suit for failure to prosecute the case and engage in meaningful discovery process”.

Why is Trump suing the BBC?

In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, the BBC broadcast Trump: A Second Chance?, an episode of its Panorama series.

The contentious piece of editing which is under scrutiny came in the documentary when Trump addressed a crowd at the US Capitol on January 6 2021, before the riots broke out.

The words which Panorama broadcast were: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

However, the full, unedited footage shows that Trump actually said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

And then, more than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell.”

Trump accused the broadcaster of defamation and of violating Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, according to court documents filed in Florida.

He claimed the documentary was “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory and malicious,” and its airing a week before the 2024 election was a “brazen attempt to influence the election’s outcome.”

The US president is claiming $5bn (£3.75bn) for defamation and another $5bn for the violation of trade practices, totalling $10bn (£7.5bn).

The BBC has already formally asked for the lawsuit to be thrown out on the grounds that the documentary was not made available to watch in the US, and therefore could not have defamed him or had any material impact on the 2024 election.

The trial is in the discovery phase, where both parties must turn over documents and information. The BBC has tried to extract as much information from Trump as possible to examine what damage, if any, was done to him as a result of the documentary.

Funnily enough, Trump hasn’t been particularly keen to comply with these requests.

The BBC has also asked for permission to subpoena Trump’s children as they may have relevant knowledge of the events surrounding his January 6 speech. These attempts to serve subpoenas have encountered obstacles.

A provisional start date for the two-week trial has been set for February 15 next year.