Trump dodges another BBC deposition at the last minute over 'national importance' issue

President Donald Trump backed out of his deposition in his own $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC, and the network asked a judge to make him sit for it.

In a motion filed Tuesday in Miami federal court, the BBC asked Magistrate Judge Enjolique Lett to order Trump to set a date and secure a location for his deposition and to appear. The network wants the court to decide the issue at an Oct. 22 hearing.

Trump sued the network in December, claiming a “Panorama” documentary defamed him by splicing together parts of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech, The Associated Press reported.

The motion said the BBC first asked for deposition dates on July 10 and followed up four more times. Trump’s lawyers proposed Oct. 16 on July 30, but only if the network held off on asking the court to set a date.

“[T]he President is no longer available for his deposition on October 16 due to other matters of national importance,” Trump’s counsel wrote on Sept. 28, after the BBC had twice asked where the deposition would take place.

His lawyers said they would try to send a new date by the end of that week, but they never did, according to the BBC.

After the network warned on Oct. 8 that it would ask the court to step in, Trump’s counsel replied that he had no availability before discovery, the evidence-gathering phase of the case, closes Dec. 18, the motion said.

Instead, his lawyers floated the second or third week of January 2027, the filing said. Trump would sit only if the BBC agreed to extend discovery, and his lawyers named no date.

Without a date and location from Trump’s team, the BBC said, it cannot send the formal notice that federal rules require before a court can punish a party for skipping a 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,” the network’s lawyers wrote.

In July, Trump’s team named him as the only person outside the BBC, its contractors and the documentary’s production company likely to have relevant information, the filing said.

“This is not the first time a litigant has been forced to seek a court’s help to secure Plaintiff’s deposition,” the BBC wrote.

The BBC pointed to Trump’s $100 million lawsuit accusing his niece of helping The New York Times publicize his tax records, according to Courthouse News.

“Defendant has been unable to secure President Trump’s agreement—despite at least five requests in the past 10 weeks—to appear for a deposition on any specific date or dates before the close of discovery,” her lawyers wrote to the judge in July 2025

Trump still had not sat for that deposition at a status conference this May, and the case settled the day depositions were supposed to be completed.

In January, weeks after he sued the BBC, Trump opposed the network’s request to partly pause discovery until the court ruled on dismissing the case, and the judge denied the pause, court records show.

“Plaintiff chose to file this lawsuit and, in doing so, he accepted the obligations of civil litigation,” the network’s lawyers argued.