A federal judge in Miami on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump to take a deposition in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC by December 11, according to multiple news outlets.
According to Politico, U.S. Magistrate Judge Anjolique Letto also warned Trump’s lawyers during Thursday’s court hearing that the suit could be dismissed if the president does not comply with a court order to provide his lawyers with British media records related to the case.
Trump’s lawyers had requested that the deposition take place between January 11 and January 22.
BBC lawyer Charles Tobin told Lett during the hearing that Trump had originally agreed to take a deposition on October 16, but the president canceled it citing “matters of national importance,” the Associated Press reported.
But Trump was actually campaigning in Georgia that day, Tobin said, the Associated Press reported.
“He was participating in partisan politics and was prioritizing that over attending the deposition,” Tobin told the judge.
When asked for comment by CNBC, the BBC said it had “nothing to add.”
In a recent court filing, lawyers for the BBC accused Trump’s legal team of dragging their feet in responding to requests for documents and records related to the case, a process known as discovery.
“With only two months left until discovery, the plaintiff is unwilling to comply with the demands.
Neither production contained any documents that might even have been in the plaintiff’s possession. Instead, the plaintiff repeatedly returned documents that the BBC had already produced during discovery, and his lawyers searched the internet in the days before they were produced and found the publicly available web pages. ”
President Trump sued the BBC on December 15, accusing it of producing a “false, defamatory, deceptive, derogatory, inflammatory, and malicious portrayal of President Trump” in the Panorama documentary, which aired a week before the 2024 presidential election.
The complaint alleges that the documentary was produced as part of a “brazen attempt” to interfere and influence the election results “to the detriment of President Trump.”
The complaint alleges that the documentary “Trump: Second Chance” was edited to falsely make it appear that President Trump explicitly encouraged his supporters to attack the Capitol during a speech outside the White House on January 6, 2021.
The BBC chairman apologized for the edits shortly before the case was brought.
The BBC also promised not to broadcast the documentary again or show it on any platform.
“The BBC deeply regrets the way the video clip was edited, but strongly disagrees that the defamation claim has merit,” the broadcaster said in a statement on November 13, 2025.
—CNBC’s Ryan Ruggiero contributed to this article.
