A federal judge in Miami has demanded that Donald Trump’s legal team provide justification for missing a court-mandated deadline in the former president’s $10 billion defamation case against the BBC.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Roy Altman issued an order requiring Trump’s attorneys to explain why they shouldn’t face sanctions for their “apparent disregard of court deadlines” after they failed to respond by Friday to the BBC’s request to have the case thrown out. Attempts to reach Trump’s legal representatives for comment on Monday were unsuccessful.
The defamation case centers on Trump’s allegations that Britain’s publicly owned broadcaster deliberately spliced together portions of a speech to create the false impression that he directly instructed his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol following his defeat in the 2020 presidential race.
The BBC has previously issued an apology to Trump, conceding that their editing constituted poor judgment and recognizing that the altered footage incorrectly suggested he had explicitly called for violence.
In court documents filed in March, the BBC argued for dismissal of the lawsuit, contending that Trump failed to adequately demonstrate that the broadcaster deliberately published misleading content or acted with reckless disregard for accuracy.
