A US magistrate judge has ordered Donald Trump to answer questions under oath by 11 December in his ongoing defamation lawsuit involving an edited speech broadcast on Panorama.
US Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett issued the order following requests from legal representatives to compel Trump to sit for a deposition, after a previously scheduled session failed to proceed.
Trump had cancelled an earlier deposition set for 16 October, citing “matters of national importance” while attending a midterms campaign rally in Dalton, Georgia, as well as a fundraising event at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Addressing the court, legal representative Charles Tobin noted that “we still haven’t been able to depose the plaintiff” despite only two months remaining in the court-mandated discovery period, during which both parties must share case information.
In a separate filing on Wednesday, attorneys for Trump rejected assertions that he was trying to evade questioning, stating he could be available for the interview between 11 and 22 January next year and claiming the broadcaster was “wrong to claim that President Trump is avoiding his deposition in this action.”
Filed in Florida, the legal action alleges that the speech delivered outside the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 before the subsequent riot was “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively” edited by combining two distinct sections of his address. Trump is suing over an episode of Panorama that edited together two different sections of a speech he gave before the riot at the US Capitol in 2021.
The broadcaster issued an apology for the editing error, acknowledging that the segment created “the mistaken impression that President Trump made a direct call for violent action.” However, it has petitioned the court to dismiss the suit, maintaining the content did not satisfy legal standards for defamation and was not broadcast in the US.
In July, legal representatives for Trump conceded they lacked evidence showing the documentary was accessible to American audiences via BritBox, the primary website, Select, or third-party US networks, as had originally been claimed. Trump also agreed to drop Studios, the commercial arm, from the action after evidence showed it had no role in creating or producing the programme.
Under US legal procedure, depositions are sworn out-of-court statements taken in response to questioning, typically held in a lawyer’s office rather than a courtroom without a judge present. They are transcribed verbatim by a court reporter and carry full legal weight as admissible evidence during trial proceedings, with attorneys from both sides present.
