President Donald Trump just suffered a humiliation in court as he continues to litigate his defeat six years ago in the 2020 election.
“President Donald Trump must sit for a deposition two weeks before Christmas in his $10 billion defamation case against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) or risk having the lawsuit thrown out, presenting him with a familiar choice,” reported Matt Naham from Law and Crime on Thursday.
“U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett issued the Dec. 11 deadline after BBC attorneys accused the president of deliberately stalling, The Associated Press reported,” he added. “The BBC’s lawyers emphasized that Trump skipped a previously scheduled Oct. 16 deposition, citing “matters of national importance,” only to attend a political campaign event in Georgia instead.”
The lawsuit stems from BBC airing a documentary called “Trump: A Second Chance” in late 2025 about Trump that implied he directly called for violent action during his Jan. 6 speech. The BBC denies Trump’s defamation accusation.
Trump has suffered a number of humiliating legal setbacks during his presidency. He lost 26 consecutive court cases in attempts to force states to give him their voter rolls, presumably so his immigration and other voter fraud authorities could detect undocumented immigrants and other would-be voters.
In July, he was embarrassed when he attempted to sue The New York Times for exposing details about the jet he purchased from Qatar.
“The Times swiftly moved to quash the subpoenas, arguing that they were issued in a bad faith effort to harass and intimidate the journalists,” Lawfare’s Anna Bower reported at the time. “What’s more, the newspaper contended that the government hadn’t come close to meeting the standard set out in New York Times v. Gonzales, the Second Circuit precedent establishing that prosecutors seeking a reporter’s confidential sources must show, among other things, that the information can’t be obtained by other means.”
Bower continued, “The Justice Department, in response, didn’t ask the court to deny the motion outright. Instead, it asked the court to hold the subpoenas in abeyance for two weeks while it pursued additional investigative steps—steps that, the government suggested, might bear on the scope of the subpoenas and on whether the Gonzales factors could ultimately be satisfied.”
The judge in the case, Justice Arun Subramanian, blasted the government for failing to live up the Gonzalez precedent. This also happened with Judge Ana Reyes, who earlier on Thursday was profiled for her frequent clashing with Trump, including over his allegedly unauthorized destruction of public land to renovate the East Potomac Golf Course.
“Judge Ana Reyes of the US District Court for the District of Columbia is the latest judge to find herself in the crosshairs of an administration that’s escalated tensions with the federal judiciary and targeted individual judges who’ve ruled against its agenda,” reported Bloomberg’s Suzanne Monk earlier on Thursday.
She continued, “The judge’s refusal to tolerate perceived missteps by the Justice Department are part and parcel with her approach on the bench, where she’s known to be direct with litigants and quick to criticize shoddy courtroom behavior.”
When discussing Trump’s golf course actions, Reyes wrote that “for months, the Court has declined Plaintiffs’ repeated requests to restrain the Government’s activities at East Potomac Golf Course. Time and again, it has credited Government counsel’s representations and refused to presume bad faith. The Government now seeks to disqualify the Court for bias. That is a serious charge. The Court answers it. With the record.”