Whatever the result of the mid-terms, one inquiry into President Donald Trump's conduct will not easily go away without a humiliating backdown on his part.

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This is the $US10 billion defamation action Trump brought in a Florida court against the BBC. In this case he picked the wrong target.

Trump's complaint is that the BBC Panorama program spliced together two parts of a speech that Trump gave on January 6, 2021. The bits were in-fact spoken 54 minutes apart, but the splicing gave the impression that Trump said, "Walk down to the Capitol" and "fight like hell" in one go.

The BBC has admitted the splicing and apologised for it, and heads rolled at the BBC. Trump, however, sued for US$10 billion saying the BBC imputed that he had been making a direct call for violent action.

Trump has already given up on half of his case which claimed damages for deceptive and unfair trade practices. He gave up on that as soon as the BBC demanded production of Trump business records to show that the program did not result in business losses because Trump was making billions.

So only the defamation action remains. This is slowly coming to a head. In a pre-trial action a judge has ordered that Trump sit for an in-person deposition under oath by December 11. If he refuses, the case could be struck out. Let's hope not because ultimately the BBC will set out to prove the truth of the defamatory imputation that Trump incited his followers to violence.

Further, the BBC will seek to prove that Trump's reputation is so poor that he should get at most nominal damages.

The BBC will also argue that the Panorama program was not shown in the US and so Trump could not have suffered any damage in Florida.

The question from Trump is whether he continues with the case, leaving himself open to cross-examination and to evidence being led as to his bad reputation. There will, of course, be limits to how wide an inquiry into his reputation a court will allow, but some exposure........

© Canberra Times