BBC lawyers accuse Trump of backing out of a deposition in his own dubious lawsuit

Donald Trump’s defamation case against the BBC is ongoing, though the president doesn’t seem especially eager to sit down for a deposition in his own lawsuit.

Over the summer, attorneys for both sides negotiated a schedule, which included plans for an Oct. 16 deposition. Evidently, that plan has fallen apart. Politico reported:

President Donald Trump was set to be deposed Friday in a defamation lawsuit he filed against the British Broadcasting Corporation, but his lawyers recently canceled the session and said he is unavailable through at least mid-December, according to a court filing.

“The President is no longer available for his deposition on October 16 due to other matters of national importance,” Trump’s attorneys told lawyers for the BBC late last month, the network’s attorneys said in motion Tuesday. The BBC is asking a judge to force Trump to set a firm date to submit to questioning in the case.

“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,” BBC lawyer Charles Tobin wrote. “There is hardly a more crucial and relevant piece of discovery in a defamation lawsuit than the deposition of the Plaintiff.”

While Trump has earned a reputation as a president who loves to file outlandish lawsuits against major news organizations, his gambit against the BBC was weird even for him.

Late last year, Trump sued the British broadcaster for $10 billion over a news program that focused on the Jan. 6 attack. Defending the litigation, Trump told reporters that the network “literally put words in my mouth,” adding, “I guess they used AI. … They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with Jan. 6 that I didn’t say.”

That wasn’t quite right. For one thing, the BBC didn’t use artificial intelligence. For another, the network did air a program that edited Trump’s Jan. 6 speech, connecting two clips that were delivered roughly 50 minutes apart, but the news outlet didn’t manufacture words or phrases out of whole cloth.

Nevertheless, the editing sparked a controversy that led to an internal investigation, and the BBC ultimately fired some senior officials and issued a written apology.

Trump, however, apparently doesn’t want an apology. He wants $10 billion.

That said, the case can’t and won’t proceed until the president gives a deposition, and as things stand, he seems reluctant to help advance his own case. Trump’s attorneys’ latest position is that he might be available in the second or third week of January.

The president has filed a great many dubious lawsuits against independent news organizations, nearly all of which ended in failure. There’s no reason to assume his case against the BBC will fare any better.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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