Grim News for the Pulitzer Board: Florida Supreme Court Declines To Delay Trump’s Lawsuit Over Award to New York Times, Washington Post

Florida’s supreme court has handed the Pulitzer Prize Board yet another loss in its attempt to kick President Trump’s defamation lawsuit down the road until after he leaves office.Mr. Trump is suing the Pulitzer board, which is funded by Columbia University and hands out the coveted journalism prizes, for defamation over its decision to award the 2018 national reporting prize to the New York Times and the Washington Post — for their coverage of now largely discredited allegations that Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia, and the Pulitzers’ subsequent defense of the decision.The board has faced repeated setbacks in Florida courts in its attempt to delay the president’s lawsuit until after he leaves office. After Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal rejected the board’s request in May, the board asked Florida’s supreme court to take up its case, but on Tuesday, the state’s high court turned the board away, letting the lower court’s ruling stand. The 2024 Pulitzer Prize board. Front row from left: E. Ramshaw, N. Brown, T. Shelby, M. Miller; back row left to right: C. Lozada, N. Barnes, V. T. Nguyen, K. Lytle Hernández, A. Applebaum, J. Cobb (on screen; attending virtually), K. Merida, N. Carroll, S. Chan, D. Remnick (slightly behind S. Chan), G. Escobar, G. Thompson (slightly behind G. Escobar) and E. Alexander. Jose Lopez, Columbia UniversityThe Florida supreme court said, “This cause having heretofore been submitted to the Court on jurisdictional briefs and portions of the record deemed necessary to reflect jurisdiction under Article V, Section 3(b), Florida Constitution, and the Court having determined that it should decline to accept jurisdiction, it is ordered that the petition for review is denied.”“No motion for rehearing will be entertained by the Court,” the order said. It is unclear what the Pulitzer board’s next steps will be. The board told the Sun, “Allowing this case to proceed facilitates President Trump’s use of state courts as both a sword and a shield — allowing him to seek retribution against anyone he chooses in state court while simultaneously claiming immunity for himself whenever convenient.”It added that it is “evaluating next steps” to continue its “defense of journalism and First Amendment rights.”A former special counsel, Robert Mueller, testifies before the House Intelligence Committee about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in the Rayburn House Office Building July 24, 2019, at Washington, D.C. Alex Wong/Getty ImagesAn attorney for Mr. Trump, R. Quincy Bird, told the Daily Business Review, part of Law.com, “This was a correct and just decision by the Florida Supreme Court. President Trump is committed to holding those who traffic in fake news, lies, and smears to account, and he will see this powerful case through to a winning conclusion.”“We now continue a very illuminating discovery process,” Mr. Bird said. The board has advanced a novel legal argument: That it has the ability to decide Mr. Trump is too busy to pursue his litigation. The board says that the case presents “constitutional conflicts” and that it would “interfere with his official duties and responsibilities.” The board also said that allowing the lawsuit to continue would let courts “exercise ‘direct control’ over” the president.However, the Fourth District Court of Appeal rejected that argument, saying the board was effectively asking the court to “invoke a temporary immunity under the Supremacy Clause on [Mr. Trump’s] behalf to stay this civil proceeding, even though [Mr. Trump] has not sought such relief.” In this photo provided by the Florida supreme court, the justices are seen. Front row: Justice Charles T. Canady; Chief Justice Carlos G. Muñiz; Justice Jorge Labarga. Back row: Justice Renatha Francis; Justice John D. Couriel; Justice Jamie R. Grosshans; Justice Meredith Sasso. Florida supreme court via KBIEarlier this year, the board sought to have the lawsuit dismissed as 19 defendants did not live in Florida, and they argued that Florida courts did not have legal jurisdiction over them. However, a three-judge panel on the Fourth District Court of Appeal rejected that argument. In 2018, the Times and the Post were awarded the national reporting prize for their coverage of allegations that the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russian operatives to swing the election. The intense press coverage of the issue — much of which emanated from the Times and the Post — contributed to pressure to appoint a special counsel to investigate the allegations. The awards focused on 20 articles that were written in 2017.In 2019, the special counsel appointed to investigate the allegations, Robert Mueller, said his probe did not find evidence that Mr. Trump’s campaign conspired with Russian operatives. Mr. Mueller’s team did find evidence of Russian interference. Mr. Trump has said Mr. Mueller’s report debunks the reporting from the Times and the Post and has called for the Pulitzer board to make the rare decision to rescind its awards. Since the prizes were established in 1917, the board has only rescinded one award, which was given to a Washington Post reporter, Janet Cooke. In 1981, the board rescinded the prize after Ms. Cooke admitted that her story about an 8-year-old heroin addict was fabricated. The decision to award the Putlizer to the Times and the Post for their Russia reporting has been denounced in conservative media. The New York PostThe Pulitzer board has declined to rescind the award it gave to the Times’s Moscow bureau chief, Walter Duranty, in 1932 for his coverage that celebrated Josef Stalin as a leader and his policies, while overlooking the results of those policies, such as mass starvation that led to the deaths of millions. The Pulitzer board said it would not rescind the award because it did not find “clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception” in Duranty’s reporting. After Mr. Mueller’s report was released and as pressure mounted for the Pulitzer board to rescind its prizes, it commissioned two independent reviews (by secret reviewers) to evaluate the reporting it awarded. The board then made a serious legal error in 2022 when it announced its decision not to rescind the awards, saying, “The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in national reporting stand.”The board said that the two “independent” reviews of the award-winning reporting determined that no “passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”That statement reset the clock on the statute of limitations, opening the door for Mr. Trump to file his defamation lawsuit. The Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha has been awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Circle Light PublishersThe Pulitzer board tends to support journalism that upholds or enforces liberal and progressive viewpoints, especially regarding race, policing, and Mr. Trump. Its board members include anti-Trump journalists such as David Remnick of the New Yorker and Anne Applebaum of the Atlantic, as well as professors of identity-focused disciplines such as African American studies and “ethnicity.” So far, the board has indicated it is not interested in trying to settle the president’s lawsuit.The Pulitzer Prize operation is funded, housed, and overseen by Columbia, one of the richest American universities, with a $15 billion endowment that would likely be on the hook to pay any judgment or settlement. Columbia has already agreed to pay a $200 million fine to the federal government as part of a settlement related to antisemitism on campus.This year, the Pulitzer board awarded a prize to a Palestinian “poet,” Mosab Abu Toha, who has made offensive comments about the Jewish hostages in Gaza. A Pulitzer also went to Reuters’ photography staff, which included Anas al-Sharif, who Israel says was the commander of a Hamas cell. Israel targeted and killed him in a bombing strike this summer.

Grim News for the Pulitzer Board: Florida Supreme Court Declines To Delay Trump’s Lawsuit Over Award to New York Times, Washington Post

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