the time the Speech was given. 

Trump's side also argued that  Smith's testimony would be duplicative,  because he published he lengthy report on the events of January 6 and also testified for many hours.  The entirety of his testimony is publicly available,  it argued.

The BBC countered, in the same filing, that there were few more knowledgeable sources about the events of Jan. 6 than Smith, who studied and investigated them for years.

 It is difficult to imagine a more authoritative source on these issues than Mr. Smith, who spent years gathering evidence on those topics with the force of the Justice Department and the power of the grand jury behind him,  the BBC's lawyers argued.

 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. 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 to robustly defend itself on every element of his claim… 

When will Trump sit for a deposition?

A key question also remains: When will Trump himself appear? In a filing Oct. 13, BBC lawyers said they first requested dates for a deposition in July, and followed up repeatedly, with both sides eventually agreeing on Oct. 16.

After weeks of silence, they wrote,  Plaintiff's counsel responded on September 28, 2026, indicating that  the President is no longer available for his deposition on October 16 due to other matters of national importance' and that counsel would  endeavor to provide you with a replacement date by the end of this week.' He did not. 

They said they were then told that Trump  has no availability whatsoever for a deposition  before discovery is set to close on Dec. 18, and that Trump would instead make himself available the second or third week of January.

 Two months of discovery remaining, the BBC still has not been able to depose, and does not even have a schedule to depose, the most central figure in this case: Plaintiff himself,  attorney Charles D. Tobin wrote in the filing.  Those delays have flouted the cooperative spirit of discovery and precluded the BBC from obtaining the evidence necessary to robustly litigate its defense.