A federal judge in the United States has ordered President Donald Trump to sit for a deposition as part of his $10bn defamation lawsuit against the British broadcaster BBC. On Thursday, US Magistrate Judge Enjolique Lett ruled that Trump would be required to answer questions under oath in a session with the BBC‘s lawyers. The deposition is scheduled to take place no later than December 11, or Trump could face sanctions, including the possible dismissal of the lawsuit.
Trump had previously been scheduled to sit for deposition on October 16 but had cancelled due to a “matter of national importance”. Charles Tobin, a lawyer for the BBC, said that the president was in fact campaigning in the state of Georgia on that day. The BBC lawsuit is one of several he has launched against news outlets over coverage he dislikes or casts as unfair.
Trump is currently enmeshed in another $10bn defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal that he refiled in May after it was previously dismissed. Another defamation case seeks $15bn in damages from The New York Times and Penguin Random House, a book publisher. That streak of litigation has alarmed press freedom advocates who say that the president frequently uses government pressure and legal threats to shape coverage in his favour.
His case against the BBC centres on a documentary it aired, titled Trump: A Second Chance. The documentary features clips of a speech Trump made on January 6, 2021, the day that Trump supporters later attacked the US Capitol. Trump has said that a clip from his speech was misleadingly edited to suggest he encouraged attendees to storm the Capitol, the seat of the US Congress.
Legislators inside had been in the process of certifying Trump’s 2020 election defeat at the time of the riot. The British broadcaster has acknowledged that filmmakers spliced together different segments of Trump’s remarks on January 6. The head of the BBC and its top news executive both resigned, and the outlet issued an apology.
But the network has denied Trump’s defamation claims. Trump has maintained that he never told his supporters to commit violence in a bid to prevent the peaceful transition of power. Trump, however, has long pushed the false claim that his loss in the 2020 race was due to election-rigging.
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