President Trump is fighting to block former special counsel Jack Smith from being deposed in Trump’s 10 billion dollar defamation lawsuit against the BBC, setting up a new legal showdown over the January 6 Capitol attack.
The BBC subpoenaed Smith as part of its defence against Trump’s claim that the network defamed him through deceptive editing in a 2024 documentary, “Trump: A Second Chance”, about the January 6, 2021, insurrection, according to reports. In a court filing, Trump’s lawyers argued that “Smith lacks any personal knowledge regarding the issues in this matter” and called his testimony “entirely irrelevant”.
The BBC pushes back
The BBC’s attorneys rejected that argument, writing that “none of [Trump]’s arguments for blocking the deposition of Mr. Smith can withstand scrutiny”, according to reports. They noted that Smith himself does not object to testifying, and that Trump still bears the burden of proving he “did not foment or incite the January 6 Capitol riot”.
“No one forced Plaintiff to file this lawsuit and to dispute that his speech on January 6 incited the violence that followed at the Capitol,” the BBC’s lawyers wrote, according to reports. “But as long as he chooses to maintain the case, he cannot commit the fundamental injustice of preventing the BBC from obtaining the evidence it needs.” The network also pointed to BBC Chair Samir Shah’s public apology, which said the documentary “gave the mistaken impression that you had made a direct call for violent action”.
A deposition of his own
The BBC is separately asking the judge to compel Trump to sit for his own deposition. Its lawyers say Trump canceled an agreed October 16 date because of unspecified “matters of national importance” but spent that day at a campaign rally in Georgia and a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, according to reports. A judge has threatened sanctions if Trump does not sit for the deposition.
