The BBC is asking a federal judge in Florida to force Donald Trump to appear for a deposition in the president’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the British network.
According to a document filed Tuesday, the BBC and Trump’s legal team had agreed that he would be impeached on Friday. The BBC’s lawyers wrote to the judge that they had spent months trying to find a venue for the Trump team’s deposition.
On September 28, Trump’s lawyers told the BBC that the president “was no longer available for his testimony on October 16 due to other matters of national importance.”
While Trump’s lawyers said they would quickly give a replacement date, they did not do so, ultimately suggesting it would be available in the second or third week of January, well after the deadline to complete the discovery portion of the case. The BBC’s lawyers had agreed to keep the location of the deposition confidential.
BBC lawyers are now asking the judge to require Trump’s team to schedule the deposition.
“The plaintiff has chosen to pursue this legal action and, in doing so, has accepted the obligations of a civil action,” the BBC motion states. “The BBC therefore asks the court to require the complainant to confirm a date for his deposition, to inform the BBC of a safe location where such a deposition is possible and of any other logistics necessary to ensure the safety of the complainant, and to sit down for the deposition, as required by the basic rules of discovery.”
Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Aytch Lett scheduled a preliminary hearing for October 22 which should address the question of the deposition.
“Nearly eight months after discovery, after seven depositions of BBC witnesses, and with only two months of discovery, the BBC still has not been able to depose, and does not even have a timetable for deposing, the most central figure in this case: the plaintiff himself,” BBC lawyers wrote in Tuesday’s motion.
Trump, who has a long history of suing 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 editing of a Panorama documentary covering comments he made at a rally on January 6, 2021. The BBC apologized for the error.
“The once-respected and now-disgraced BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously and deceptively falsifying 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 history of misleading its audiences in its coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own left-wing political agenda. President Trump’s lawsuit holds the BBC accountable for its defamation and reckless election interference, just as it has held other mainstream fake news outlets accountable for their wrongdoing.”
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