The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is seeking to depose former special counsel Jack Smith as part of its defense against President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over a documentary that he alleges falsely portrayed his January 6, 2021, speech, according to a new federal court filing. In a joint motion filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Trump and the BBC laid out opposing positions over a subpoena the broadcaster served on Smith on October 1.
The lawsuit centers on the BBC Panorama documentary Trump: A Second Chance? which Trump alleges falsely portrayed his January 6 speech as inciting or fomenting the U.S. Capitol riot through an edit the BBC later acknowledged created the mistaken impression that he had made a “direct call for violent action.” Trump’s attorneys are asking the court to quash the subpoena, while the BBC argues Smith possesses information relevant to whether the president's speech fomented or incited the violence that followed at the U.S. The filing does not mean Smith has been ordered to testify.
The two sides are now asking the court to hold a discovery hearing after failing to resolve the dispute themselves. Newsweek reached out to the legal team for Smith by email Monday for comment. Smith said in his December 2025 congressional deposition that investigators had developed “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump criminally conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a claim which he repeated during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this past September.
Smith indicted Trump in August 2023 over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but the case never went to trial and was dismissed in November 2024 after Trump returned to office because of Justice Department policy barring the federal prosecution of a sitting president. The fight over Smith's testimony centers on how far the BBC can go in seeking evidence about Trump’s conduct and intentions surrounding January 6 as it defends itself against his lawsuit. The court has previously ruled that the BBC is entitled to discovery concerning the message and impression conveyed by Trump’s speech but cannot use the lawsuit to investigate every aspect of January 6.
Trump's lawyers argue that the BBC is overreaching and point to a September ruling quashing its subpoena to former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, in which the court cautioned against turning discovery into a “fishing expedition.” The BBC argues Smith is different because, according to the broadcaster’s filing, Smith himself is not objecting to the subpoena. According to the filing, Trump alleges in his $10 billion lawsuit that the BBC published false and defamatory statements about him and violated Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act through its portrayal of his January 6 speech. The filing quotes BBC chair Samir Shah acknowledging that the way Trump's speech was edited in the documentary created a “misleading impression” by making excerpts from different portions of the speech appear continuous.
Shah said the edit created the “mistaken impression” that Trump had made a “direct call for violent action,” calling it an “editorial error” for which the BBC apologized. Trump's attorneys argue that Shah's statement means falsity is no longer genuinely disputed and say discovery in the case has not produced information showing that the challenged statements were true or substantially true. That is Trump's position in the litigation, not a finding by the court.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
