A federal judge in Miami handed Donald Trump an ultimatum on Thursday: sit for a sworn deposition by December 11 in the $10 billion defamation lawsuit he filed against the BBC — or watch his own case get thrown out.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjolique Lett issued the order from the bench after lawyers for the BBC accused the American president of dodging sworn questioning for months. Trump had been scheduled to sit for a deposition on October 16 but canceled, with his lawyers citing matters of national importance. The BBC’s legal team told the court it had been seeking his testimony since July — and that Trump’s lawyers had proposed pushing the deposition to January 2027, past the December 18 deadline for completing evidence-gathering. The judge allowed up to seven hours of questioning to be preserved on video, rejecting Trump’s attempt to block recording.
The lawsuit, filed in December 2025 in federal court in Florida, centers on an episode of Panorama — the BBC’s long-running current-affairs documentary program — that aired shortly before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The program combined separate portions of Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech into a sequence that appeared to show him directly urging supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol and use violence. Trump says the remarks were delivered at different points in the speech. The BBC has acknowledged the editing was misleading and apologized, but maintains the broadcast did not amount to defamation.
A leaked internal BBC memo that cited the edits as evidence of potential political bias turned the case into a public-relations crisis for Britain’s publicly funded broadcaster and triggered high-level resignations.
The deposition fight is only one front. The BBC is also seeking financial records from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida covering January 2020 through January 2026, arguing the records will show whether the documentary actually damaged his reputation or business interests. Trump’s lawyers call the request too broad and irrelevant. The judge sided with the BBC, finding the records sufficiently connected to the president’s professional reputation, and ordered additional records to be produced within 30 days. The BBC has also subpoenaed former special counsel Jack Smith over his investigations into the 2020 election and January 6 — a move Trump’s lawyers oppose. Separately, the broadcaster is challenging whether the Florida court even has jurisdiction, arguing the documentary was neither broadcast nor distributed in the United States.
To win, Trump must prove “actual malice” — that the BBC knew its portrayal was false or acted with reckless disregard for the accuracy of its reporting. He is also invoking Florida’s law against unfair and deceptive trade practices.
The deposition order is the latest complication for a White House that has spent October juggling high-stakes diplomacy — from the tariff fight over Russia that briefly threatened India and China with 100% tariffs (Trump Waives the Russia Sanctions Bill a Day Before It Bites — Sparing India and China 100% Tariffs) to Trump’s personal invitation to Vladimir Putin for the December G20 in Miami (Trump Says He’d “Love to Have” Putin at the December G20 in Miami).
Why this matters beyond the United States
For readers outside America, this case is not really about one documentary. It is the biggest legal test yet of Trump’s campaign against news organizations whose coverage he dislikes — and its target is not a domestic rival but a foreign public broadcaster. A sitting U.S. president demanding $10 billion from Britain’s BBC, then being ordered to answer questions under oath by the BBC’s own lawyers, would be an extraordinary spectacle in any democracy. If the case reaches a full trial, video of a sitting president cross-examined about what he said — and meant — on January 6 could become one of the most watched courtroom moments in American history.
The judge’s deadline stands unless the district judge overseeing the case, Jeffrey Kuntz, extends the discovery period. Either way, the next milestone is December 11: Trump sits down and answers — or his $10 billion lawsuit dies.
