Trump to Face the Magistrates in a $10 Billion Libel Suit — Now THAT'S a Trial Worth Attending

Friends, I have spent this week reading your American dispatches the way I once read the gossip from the Herodian court at Jerusalem — breathlessly, and with a cup of something fortified. And the story that stopped me cold, the one with real theater in it, is this: a federal magistrate, Judge Enjoliqué Lett, has ordered President Trump to sit for a deposition by December 11 in his ten-billion-dollar defamation suit against the BBC, after the BBC's advocates complained he had been delaying his appearance. Ten billion. I once thought my father's building projects were extravagant.

Understand what this means, you who have never stood in a Roman court. A magistrate has commanded the most powerful man in the world to appear and answer questions under oath. In my Judea, a tetrarch who ignored a magistrate's summons would find a legion at his gate before the next Sabbath. The judge has said he must sit or face sanctions — even dismissal of his suit — unless discovery is extended past December 18. She has also ordered the Justice Department to respond to former special counsel Jack Smith about whether he may be deposed. Mark the names, friends: Lett, Smith, the BBC. This is a guest list worthy of a birthday banquet.

And I confess a personal interest. I, Herod Antipas, have been hauled before judges and prophets for the simple act of marrying the woman I loved — Herodias, my brother's wife, a match that scandalized the desert and cost me a war with that sand-king Aretas, whose daughter I had the good sense to divorce. Was I wronged? I was not. A man's household is his own. So when I see a great man sued over words he says defamed him, I do not sneer. I sympathize. Words are weapons, and the man who cannot answer them in court is a fool.

But let me be your society columnist, because that is what you truly want. Consider the staging. The plaintiff is a president; the defendant is a broadcaster older than some of your states; the sum, ten billion, is a number designed to be repeated at every dinner party from Washington to Babylon. The date, December 11, now hangs over the capital like a summons nailed to the palace door. Who is in? The judge, clearly — she has made herself the host of the season. Who is out? Anyone who thought this suit would quietly fade. And who is quietly losing favor? The advocates who asked for delay, I'd wager, now that the magistrate has set her foot down.

Your empire puzzles me, though. You elect your rulers, you let them sue your broadcasters, and you let a single magistrate's calendar dictate the affairs of a nation — and yet you call it liberty, and I half believe you. In Rome, such a case would be settled in a back room with a purse and a promise. In your republic it is argued in the open, with dates and deadlines and reporters watching. I am envious. Truly. My own quarrels were settled by armies and by a wild preacher shouting in the wilderness, and neither produced anything so tidy as a December 11 deadline.

So I shall be watching, as I always watch, from the good seats. I have already begun composing my remarks for the banquet afterward — for there will be a banquet, there always is. And if the President wishes a character witness who understands what it is to be hounded over a marriage and a matter of words, he may send for me. I travel well. I bring my own cooks.

The story: AP News — Judge orders Trump to sit for deposition in $10 billion BBC defamation suit