Trump Scores Win in Lawsuit Against Pulitzer Prize Board for ‘Defaming’ Him With Award for Russia Coverage

President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board is on track to enter the discovery phase after the 47th president was handed a major legal victory this week. The suit, filed by Mr. Trump against the Pulitzer Prize’s board in 2022, hinges on a statement released that year by the board in defense of its prior decision to award the 2018 national reporting prize to the New York Times and the Washington Post for their coverage of Russian interference during Mr. Trump’s first presidential bid. Monday’s ruling, issued by Judge Robert Pegg, gives Mr. Trump the right to review all board communications surrounding the decision to award the prestigious prize to the Times and the Post. The order shoots down a motion filed last week by the board seeking to safeguard the materials. Mr. Trump’s legal team took Monday’s court ruling as a “win” and doubled down on Mr. Trump’s determination to “seeing this case through to a just conclusion,” his attorney, Quincy Bird, told Fox News. Mr. Bird continued: “President Trump is committed to holding those who traffic in deception and fake news to account. The defendants, hiding behind the once-prestigious Pulitzer Prizes, attempted to resurrect a left-wing hoax by giving, as well as continuing to stand by and republishing, its disgraced award to the organizations that drove the infamous ‘Russia Russia Russia’ hoax.”The Pulitzer board awarded the prize to the Times and the Post in 2018 for their “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.” The award-winning coverage centered around allegations that Russia worked with Mr. Trump to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and to boost Mr. Trump’s chances of an electoral victory. The accusations were eventually subject to an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.In his report, published in 2019, Mr. Mueller concluded that he “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in the election interference activities.” The report did, however, conclude that Russian interference in the election was “sweeping and systematic” and that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts” and “welcomed” the help. Mr. Trump has for years called on the board to rescind the award. In 2022, the board issued a statement defending the award, adding that it commissioned two independent reviews of the submitted reporting, both of which concluded 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.”Mr. Trump, however, sued the board’s 20 members for creating a “false implication that there was a connection between President Trump, his 2016 presidential election campaign and Russia.” His complaint alleges that at the time of the board’s statement, “nearly every branch and agency of the federal government had examined this issue and reached the same conclusion: there was no conspiracy or cooperation between President Trump or the Trump Campaign and Russia.”Lawyers for the board have argued that the statement justifying the award to the Times and Post could not be defamatory given that it was an opinion, not a fact. Over the summer, their motion to dismiss the libel lawsuit was denied by Judge Pegg, who cited legal precedent that a statement could be deemed defamatory if a speaker fails to provide adequate factual context.

Trump Scores Win in Lawsuit Against Pulitzer Prize Board for ‘Defaming’ Him With Award for Russia Coverage

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