Judge Orders Trump Deposition in $10B BBC Lawsuit
Is this a judicial stitch-up, or did Trump blunder his way into a fight he can't win?
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Above: U.S President Donald Trump in Park City, Kansas on Oct. 19. Image credit: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images
The Facts
- A federal magistrate judge ordered U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday to sit for a deposition by Dec. 11 in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, warning that noncompliance could bring sanctions, including dismissal of the case.
- Trump sued the BBC after the broadcaster sliced parts of the president's Jan. 6, 2021 speech to depict Trump claiming "We're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell." The BBC apologized for its editing while denying that it defamed him.
- BBC lawyers said they sought deposition dates starting in July and agreed on Oct. 16, but Trump's team canceled, citing "matters of national importance," and later said he had no availability before discovery closes, proposing a date in January.
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The Spin
Pro-Trump narrative
A foreign network caught splicing a speech to invent a call for violence should not be setting the terms for its defense, while a judge threatening to toss the case over a scheduling fight reeks of the same ideological bias that conveniently dropped key context for the sake of narrative. We are witnessing once again another deep state stitch-up.
Anti-Trump narrative
Picking an outlandish fight with a broadcaster that refuses to fold was a blunder that Trump must now be ruing. Plenty of American outlets caved and wrote checks, but the BBC has smartly turned the claim into an opportunity to turn the screw on the president under oath. Either Trump faces the music, or his entire lawsuit goes down in flames.
