A federal judge has ordered Donald Trump to sit for questioning in his $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC by December 11 or risk having the case thrown out.
US Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett issued the order at a hearing in Miami on Thursday after the BBC's lawyers complained that Trump had repeatedly stalled appearing for a deposition.
BBC attorney Charles Tobin told the court that with two months left in the discovery period, 'we still haven't been able to depose the plaintiff.'
The two sides had agreed on an October 16 sit-down, but the president canceled over a 'matter of national importance.'
Tobin told the court Trump was in fact campaigning in Georgia.
'He was participating in party politics and prioritized that over sitting for the deposition,' Tobin said.
Lett warned that Trump faces sanctions up to and including the dismissal of his lawsuit if he misses the deadline, unless the discovery period is extended beyond December 18.
Trump filed the lawsuit in Florida last December over a BBC Panorama documentary that spliced together parts of his January 6, 2021, speech to make it appear he directly urged violence.
Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Pendleton, South Carolina, on Wednesday
The broadcaster apologized for the edit but denies defaming him. Director-general Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness both resigned over the scandal.
The BBC has asked the court to throw out the case, arguing the documentary never aired in Florida or anywhere in the US and that Trump's claims fall 'well short of the high bar of actual malice' a public figure must clear.
Its lawyers also argued he 'cannot plausibly claim that the documentary harmed his reputation' because he won the 2024 election a week after it aired and carried Florida by a wide margin.
'Indeed, the documentary was prescient in accurately describing the loyalty plaintiff enjoys among his supporters, and that led to his return to the White House,' the BBC's motion added.
BBC lawyers said in an October 13 filing that they first asked for deposition dates in July and chased them repeatedly before both sides settled on October 16.
They said they heard nothing for weeks until Trump's lawyer wrote on September 28 that 'the President is no longer available for his deposition on October 16 due to other matters of national importance.'
The lawyer promised to 'endeavor to provide you with a replacement date by the end of this week,' according to the filing. 'He did not,' the BBC's lawyers wrote.
Trump's team then told the broadcaster he 'has no availability whatsoever for a deposition' before discovery closes on December 18 and offered the second or third week of January instead.
'Two months of discovery remaining, the BBC still has not been able to depose, and does not even have a schedule to depose, the most central figure in this case: Plaintiff himself,' Tobin wrote.
The BBC is also chasing testimony from Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr., telling the court the president's two eldest children were with him as he revised his January 6 speech and when he delivered it.
Kushner drafted a statement condemning the Capitol violence that the White House never issued, the BBC says. Trump's lawyers accused the broadcaster of seeking 'politically-driven leverage' over the president through his family.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner at Joint Base Andrews on January 20, 2021. The BBC has subpoenaed the pair in the defamation suit
Trump speaks to his supporters outside the White House on January 6, 2021
Police turned away the BBC's process servers at Ivanka and Kushner's Miami home in May, and a Secret Service lawyer later said the agency was not authorized to accept subpoenas for them. A bid to serve Don Jr. at Trump Tower also failed.
Lett cleared the way on October 9, allowing the BBC to serve the trio by certified mail to their home and business addresses and by email to Trump's lawyers. The ruling does not settle any objections to the scope of the subpoenas.
Lawyers for both sides tussled on Thursday over the BBC's separate bid to depose Jack Smith, the former special counsel who brought the federal January 6 case against Trump. The president strongly opposes the move.
Smith charged Trump in August 2023 with four felony counts over his bid to overturn the 2020 election, but the case was dropped after his 2024 victory under a Justice Department policy barring the prosecution of a sitting president.
The broadcaster subpoenaed Smith earlier this month, but Trump's lawyers argued in a joint filing that there was no reason for Smith, who is not a party to the case, to appear.
'Smith lacks any personal knowledge regarding the issues in this matter,' they wrote. 'He was not present when President Trump's January 6, 2021, speech... was made, nor did he participate in its preparation.'
Trump's team also argued that 'Smith's testimony would be duplicative,' pointing out that he published a lengthy report on January 6 and testified for hours. 'The entirety of his testimony is publicly available,' the filing said.
'It is difficult to imagine a more authoritative source on these issues than Mr. Smith, who spent years gathering evidence on those topics with the force of the Justice Department and the power of the grand jury behind him,' the BBC's lawyers countered.
'No one forced Plaintiff to file this lawsuit and to dispute that his speech on January 6 incited the violence that followed at the Capitol,' they added.
Smith never charged Trump with incitement and wrote in his final report released in January 2025 that prosecutors did not develop direct evidence of 'Trump's subjective intent to cause the full scope of the violence that occurred on Jan. 6.'