The BBC have hit back at Donald Trump after he once again tried to delay the broadcaster’s request for his 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 has so far swerved this request, giving some questionable justifications, but the BBC are determined to drag him kicking and screaming for a deposition if they have to.
Trump’s lawyers seek deposition delay
In his latest attempt to delay the deposition, Trump’s lawyers said the deposition cannot be videoed, accused the BBC’s lawyers of failing full confer with them to set a date, and once again claimed matters of ‘national importance’ had meant he was not able to attend the original deposition date (Trump attended a Republican rally and Mar-a-Lago on the day in question.)
Trump has said he is willing to sit for the deposition in within the period of January 11 through January 22, 2027, which conveniently falls after the deadline for the discovery portion of the case to be completed.
“Unexplained, unjustified and untimely” – BBC hit back
The BBC aren’t rolling over for Trump though. In a filing responding to his legal team, the broadcaster’s lawyers said they would be happy to accommodate special security measures for Trump’s deposition, but that his request to not have it video-recorded is “unexplained, unjustified and untimely.”
They pointed out that previous presidents have also had their depositions video-recorded.
The lawyers also decided to remind Trump that he is the plaintiff, not the defendant, in the case.
Judge orders Trump to sit deposition
Trump’s legal team’s efforts seem to be in vain though, as on Thursday a US judge ordered the president to to sit for a deposition by 11 December.
Federal magistrate judge Enjoliqué 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
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).
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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.