A federal judge in Miami on Thursday ordered that President Donald Trump sit for a deposition in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC by Dec. 11, according to multiple news outlets.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett, at a court hearing Thursday, also warned Trump’s attorneys that if the president does not comply with court orders to give lawyers for the British media outlet records that are relevant to the lawsuit, his complaint could be dismissed, Politico reported.
Trump’s lawyers had requested that his deposition be conducted between Jan. 11 and Jan. 22.
Charles Tobin, the attorney for the BBC, told Lett at the hearing that although Trump had originally agreed to sit for a deposition on Oct. 16, the president canceled it for a “matter of national importance,” The Associated Press reported.
But in fact, Tobin said, Trump was campaigning in Georgia that day, the AP reported.
“He was participating in party politics and prioritized that over sitting for the deposition,” Tobin told judge.
When contacted by CNBC for comment, the BBC said: “We have nothing to add.”
Lawyers for the BBC in a recent court filing had accused Trump’s legal team of foot-dragging in complying with requests for documents and records relevant to the case, a process known as discovery.
“With just two months of discovery remaining, Plaintiff has not even tried to comply with
his discovery obligations,” the filing said. “Neither production included documents that were even plausibly in Plaintiff’s possession. Instead, Plaintiff has repeatedly sent back documents that the BBC already produced to him during discovery, and his counsel trawled the internet in the days before production to find publicly available webpages.”
Trump sued the BBC on Dec. 15, alleging that the outlet produced a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump” in a Panorama documentary aired one week before the 2024 presidential election.
The suit alleges that the documentary was produced as part of a “brazen attempt” to interfere with and to influence the outcome of the election “to President Trump’s detriment.”
The complaint claims that the documentary, “Trump: A Second Chance,” was edited to make it falsely appear that during his Jan. 6, 2021, speech outside the White House, Trump explicitly urged his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol.
The BBC’s chair apologized for the edit shortly before the suit was filed.
The BBC also promised not to air the documentary again or show it on any of its platforms.
“While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim,” the broadcaster said in a statement on Nov. 13, 2025.
— CNBC’s Ryan Ruggiero contributed to this article.