Former White House attorney Ty Cobb stated that Donald Trump's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC has backfired now that the president has been ordered to appear for a deposition, predicting he will likely refuse to go.
"Oh, it's backfired," Cobb said on CNN Thursday. "Trump has sued multiple media outlets about stories that he didn’t like, even though the reporting was truthful."
Trump initially sued the BBC in December, accusing the network of editing his Jan. 6, 2021, speech featured in a documentary that aired days before the 2024 presidential election. The lawsuit claimed the BBC’s edit was a “brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the election.
However, Trump’s legal battle appeared to turn against him on Thursday, when U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett ordered Trump to be deposed by Dec. 11 after lawyers for the BBC took issue with the president’s delayed appearance.
"Trump has dragged it out. He’s the plaintiff in the case. He’s the one that invented these claims," Cobb said. "He contests the way that they edited actual excerpts of his January 6 exhortation for an insurrection, and he didn’t like the way they pieced it together. So, you know, he complained about it, hoping that they would cave too and pay him off, but they didn’t."
According to Cobb, the president’s case will be dismissed if he does not speak under oath.
"It’s really sort of fascinating, you know, to see Trump when the facts are about to come out," he told host Erin Burnett. Cobb suggested the deposition could allow BBC attorneys to question Trump about potential damage to his reputation, potentially bringing up controversies such as his bankruptcies, felony convictions, pardons, and association with the Epstein files.
"So this will be wide-ranging, which is why Trump will never sit for it," Cobb said. "He’s likely to refuse to go. If he does go, he’ll walk out in the middle, and the case will ultimately get dismissed unless the plaintiffs are entitled to and receive his full testimony."