President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the members of the Pulitzer Prize Board scored a significant legal victory on Monday.
In an attempt to protect their internal communications on the decision-making process behind awarding The New York Times and The Washington Post a Pulitzer for their Russiagate coverage, the board members filed a Protective Order Governing Discovery last week. 19th Judicial Circuit Court Judge Robert L. Pegg shot down the motion, paving a path for discovery in the case.
“The rule requires ‘an affirmative showing of annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense’ from such party or person… Defendants have failed to meet this requirement, as there is no factual support in the record demonstrating that any defendant, much less each defendant, would be subject to annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense if a protective order is not entered,” the judge explained.
Quincy Bird, an attorney representing Trump in the lawsuit, spoke to Fox News Digital about the suit.
“President Trump is committed to holding those who traffic in deception and fake news to account,” he said. “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.”
“This was a defamatory scam designed to damage President Trump’s image and presidential campaign. After today’s win in court, this case will now proceed to a very thorough discovery process and President Trump is committed to seeing this case through to a just conclusion,” the lawyer added.
According to the Pulitzer website, the outlets received a shared prize 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 defamation suit against Pulitzer Prizes was filed by Trump’s legal team in 2022, condemning the outlets’ coverage “now-debunked theory” of Russian collusion. The filing claims that the “demonstrably false connection was and remains the stated basis” of the award-winning coverage.
“A large swath of Americans had a tremendous misunderstanding of the truth at the time the Times’ and the Post’s propagation of the Russia Collusion Hoax dominated the media,” the filing reads. “Remarkably, they were rewarded for lying to the American public.”
Trump previously requested “a full and fair correction, apology, or retraction” to be issued by the outlets, as well as having their Pulitzer Prize revoked, but the board insisted that the award would not be taken away.
“The Pulitzer Prize Board has an established, formal process by which complaints against winning entries are carefully reviewed. In the last three years, the Pulitzer Board has received inquiries, including from former President Donald Trump, about submissions from The New York Times and The Washington Post on Russian interference in the U.S. election and its connections to the Trump campaign–submissions that jointly won the 2018 National Reporting prize,” they said, defending their decision.
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