President Donald Trump is delaying sitting for a deposition in his own lawsuit against the BBC, at least according to the media giant’s legal team. The Los Angeles Times reports that Trump doesn’t want to be deposed until January 2027.
BBC’s legal team says Trump canceled an agreed-upon date for his deposition. The reason for Trump backing out is reportedly due to “matters of national importance.” BBC’s legal team wants a judge to force him to sit for the deposition sooner than the newly proposed date.
BBC lawyers said the initial proposed date for the deposition was for July, but they didn’t hear back until several follow-up requests. Eventually, they settled on October 16.
In Trump’s filing to delay the deposition again, BBC’s attorneys say they received a note saying, “Plaintiff’s counsel responded on September 28, 2026, indicating that ‘the President is no longer available for his deposition on October 16 due to other matters of national importance’ and that counsel would ‘endeavor to provide you with a replacement date by the end of this week.’ He did not.” They say Trump’s legal team says he has no earlier availability, not even before discovery is set to close on December 18. Trump says he is not available until the second or third week in January 2027.
Trump is engulfed in a legal war with the BBC. He sued the broadcasting company for $10 billion, accusing the network of defamation and violating Florida’s deceptive trade practices law over the BBC-produced documentary, Trump: A Second Chance, which chronicles Trump’s political ascension ahead of his second term, as well as the fallout from the January 2021 U.S. Capitol attacks.
Those involved in creating Trump: A Second Chance admit that there are two different parts of one of Trump’s speeches sliced together in which he encourages violence. Trump’s argues the editing paints a false narrative.
“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’s attorney Charles D. Tobin wrote in the filing. “Those delays have flouted the cooperative spirit of discovery and precluded the BBC from obtaining the evidence necessary to robustly litigate its defense.”
Trump’s legal team hasn’t spoken publicly about his delay in sitting in the deposition. Instead, they double down in their argument against the BBC, saying the broadcast company should be held “accountable for its defamation and reckless election interference just as he has held other fake news mainstream media responsible for their wrongdoing.”