Judge orders Trump to sit for deposition in $10 billion BBC lawsuit after months of delay

A federal judge ordered President Donald Trump to sit for a deposition by Dec. 11 in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC.

Axios reported that Trump will likely have to answer questions under oath in a case he started after U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett issued the order Thursday at a hearing in Miami, ending a weeks-long standoff over when the president would sit for questioning.

Trump sued the British broadcaster in December 2025 over a “Panorama” documentary that spliced together two parts of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech, delivered about 54 minutes apart. The edit made it look as though he directly urged violence. The BBC apologized and pulled the program, and its director-general and top news executive resigned. But the network denies it defamed Trump.

Getting Trump in front of the BBC’s lawyers has been a struggle. The BBC first asked for deposition dates in July. Trump’s team offered Oct. 16, then canceled in late September, saying the president was unavailable “due to other matters of national importance.” The BBC noted he appeared at a rally in Dalton, Georgia, that day.

His lawyers then said he had no availability before discovery closes on Dec. 18 and suggested January 2027 instead. In a filing Wednesday, they offered a window of Jan. 11 to 22 and asked the court to bar video recording of his testimony.

“President Trump is not avoiding his deposition in this action,” his lawyers wrote.

Lett had already lost patience. Last week she warned that “the Court has admonished Plaintiff for his lack of participation to no avail” and said failure to comply going forward “will lead to sanctions.”

The BBC has argued that “Plaintiff chose to file this lawsuit and, in doing so, he accepted the obligations of civil litigation.”

Trump has repeatedly tried to limit how much the BBC can look into his inner circle.

Earlier this month, Lett let the BBC serve subpoenas on Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner after the network said police blocked its attempts to serve them at their homes. Lawyers also clashed Thursday over whether former special counsel Jack Smith should be deposed, which Trump strongly opposes.