A US magistrate judge ordered President Trump on Thursday to sit for a seven-hour deposition by December 11 in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC.
The backstory: Trump sued over a BBC Panorama documentary that spliced together two comments he made nearly an hour apart at a January 6, 2021 rally. The BBC has acknowledged that the edit was misleading.
- Trump has since claimed, falsely, that the BBC used AI to insert words into his speech.
Zoom in: Magistrate judge Enjoliqué Lett also rejected a request from Trump's team to bar videotaping of the deposition, though the recording will be accessible only to attorneys in the case.
What they're saying: BBC attorney Charles Tobin told the Miami courtroom that discovery remains one-sided. The judge gave Trump's side 30 days to produce relevant documents ahead of a December 18 discovery deadline.
- "It strains credulity that a thorough search has been done," Lett told Alejandro Brito, Trump's Florida attorney, adding that the court was unsatisfied with the effort so far.
The other side: Brito said the president is involved in a host of daily matters the BBC's lawyers have no visibility into. A previously scheduled October 16 deposition was cancelled for what his counsel called other matters of national importance.
- In a Wednesday filing, Trump's team said he would sit for a deposition in the second or third week of January.
What's next: Lett also cleared the BBC's subpoena to Mar-a-Lago, ruling the club falls within the scope of discovery because Trump's business reputation is part of the damages he claims.
Why it matters: A sitting president is now on a court clock in a case he filed himself, and the judge has put dismissal on the table if the discovery schedule slips again.
