President Trump is trying to get out of testifying in a lawsuit that he initiated.
As part of his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, Trump was scheduled to sit for a deposition with the U.K. broadcaster’s lawyers on Friday. However, according to a court filing Tuesday, the president’s attorneys canceled the session, saying he would be unavailable for about two months, well after the discovery period in the case ends, Politico reports.
“The President is no longer available for his deposition on October 16 due to other matters of national importance,” Trump’s lawyers told their BBC counterparts. The broadcaster is trying to get a federal judge to force Trump to commit to a date for the deposition.
“Nearly eight months into discovery, after seven depositions of BBC witnesses, and with only 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,” BBC attorney Charles Tobin wrote in the filing. “There is hardly a more crucial and relevant piece of discovery in a defamation lawsuit than the deposition of the Plaintiff.”
Trump’s lawyers had reportedly agreed in July that Trump would testify on October 16 as long as both sides agreed to keep the location and other details secret. But on September 28, the president’s attorneys said that the previously agreed date no longer worked. This past Friday, they finally suggested moving the deposition to the second or third week of January, nearly one month after the discovery period ends.
Now the BBC’s lawyers want the judge on the case, U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett, to add the deposition’s scheduling to the agenda of a hearing scheduled for next week.
Trump sued the BBC last year, claiming the broadcasting company funded by the British government defamed him by deceptively editing one of his speeches on January 6, 2021, for a documentary aired one day before the 2024 presidential election.
Since then, the lawsuit has backfired for him, as the court ordered the release of Trump’s finances, as well as records from special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. Even Trump’s children are dodging subpoenas from the BBC’s lawyers for records related to the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
The BBC is trying to get Trump’s case thrown out entirely, pointing out that the documentary never aired in the U.S. and that the south Florida federal court where Trump filed the lawsuit doesn’t have jurisdiction over the case. Trump’s refusal to testify on camera is probably going to help the BBC’s efforts and expose his attempts to browbeat news organizations he doesn’t like.