US judge orders Trump to sit for deposition in $10bn lawsuit against BBC

Donald Trump walks to board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on 21 October 2026. Photograph: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenDonald Trump walks to board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on 21 October 2026. Photograph: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty ImagesDonald TrumpUS judge orders Trump to sit for deposition in $10bn lawsuit against BBCJudge threatens to dismiss Trump’s BBC lawsuit unless he cooperates with discovery process and sits for deposition

Donald Trump has been ordered by a US judge to cooperate with the discovery process mandated for his lawsuit against the BBC and to sit for a deposition by 11 December – or else he could be subject to sanctions, including the possible dismissal of the $10bn lawsuit.

The lawsuit stems from a Panorama documentary aired by the BBC that spliced together two comments made nearly an hour apart by Trump during a rally on 6 January 2021, before the US Capitol riot. The BBC has acknowledged that this specific edit was misleading, but Trump has gone on to claim, falsely, that the BBC did not just edit his speech but used AI to insert words into his speech.

While the broadcast was not readily available to view in Florida, Trump’s team has argued that he was personally damaged by the broadcast under Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

During a lengthy hearing dealing with a variety of discovery issues, federal magistrate judge Enjoliqué Lett on Thursday also rejected a request by Trump’s legal team to prevent the seven-hour-long deposition from being videotaped, though it will only be accessible to attorneys in the case.

Lett agreed with contentions from the BBC’s lawyers that Trump’s team had not been sufficiently forthcoming in handing over internal documents relevant to the case ahead of an 18 December deadline for discovery.

“We still have a completely lopsided [situation] here on discovery. They have produced absolutely nothing of any substance,” attorney Charles Tobin, on behalf of the BBC, argued in a Miami courtroom.

The documents that Trump’s team have turned over have primarily been either pulled from the internet or provided by the BBC itself.

“It strains credulity that a thorough search has been done in order to determine that all of these requests have been responded to,” Lett told Alejandro Brito, Trump’s Florida-based attorney. “The court is not satisfied that anyone is doing a thorough job.”

The judge gave the plaintiffs 30 days to produce the relevant documents. While she acknowledged that the discovery process can be “burdensome” on both parties, she said that “failure to do so could result in sanctions, including possible dismissal of the suit for failure to prosecute the case and engage in meaningful discovery process”.

Of the Trump team’s obligation to adequately participate in the discovery process, the judge said: “This is the last opportunity to do so.”

After discussing the discovery process, the judge turned to the BBC’s request to compel the president’s team to agree for a deposition, after a previously scheduled date – 16 October – was cancelled for what Trump’s counsel said were “other matters of national importance”. While the BBC noted that Trump was actually campaigning in Georgia on that day, leading Tobin to conclude that the plaintiff’s team had transmitted “fake news”, Brito said the president was “involved in a host of things” on a daily basis that the BBC’s legal team “has no idea” about.