The BBC is asking a federal judge in Florida to force Donald Trump to sit for a deposition as part of the president’s $10bn defamation lawsuit against the British broadcaster.
According to a Tuesday filing, the BBC and Trump’s legal team had agreed for him to be deposed on Friday. The BBC’s lawyers wrote to the judge that they have spent months trying to secure a location for the deposition from Trump’s team.
On 28 September, Trump’s lawyers told the BBC’s counsel that the president “is no longer available for his deposition on October 16 due to other matters of national importance”.
While Trump’s lawyers said they would follow up quickly with a replacement date, they did not, ultimately suggesting that he would be available in the second or third week of January, well after the deadline to complete the discovery portion of the case. Lawyers for the BBC had pledged to keep the location of the deposition confidential.
As such, the BBC’s lawyers are now asking the judge to require Trump’s team to schedule the deposition.
“Plaintiff chose to file this lawsuit and, in doing so, he accepted the obligations of civil litigation,” the BBC’s motion reads. “The BBC therefore asks the Court to compel Plaintiff to confirm a date for his deposition, notify the BBC of a secure location where such deposition is possible and any other logistics required to ensure Plaintiff’s safety, and sit for the deposition, as the core rules of discovery require.”
Magistrate judge Enjoliqué Aytch Lett has scheduled a discovery hearing that is likely to touch on the deposition issue for 22 October.
“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,” lawyers for the BBC wrote in the Tuesday motion.
Trump, who has a long history of legal action against media companies, filed a lawsuit against the BBC in December 2025, accusing the network of violating Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act over the edit of a Panorama documentary that edited together comments he made during a rally on 6 January 2021. The BBC has apologized for the error.
“The formerly respected and now disgraced BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement. “The BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda. President Trump’s powerhouse lawsuit is holding the BBC accountable for its defamation and reckless election interference just as he has held other fake news mainstream media responsible for their wrongdoing.”
