(RightIsRight.co) – Former President Donald Trump has filed a defamation lawsuit arguing the Pulitzer Prize board made a statement that slandered him.
The lawsuit comes after Trump threatened for months to make such a move over Pulitzer-awarded news stories on the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election and the debunked “Trump – Russia Collusion” claims, The Hill reported, as cited by Newsmax.
Trump filed the lawsuit as he disagreed with the conclusion of two independent reviews of media coverage that he had requested from the Pulitzer Prize board.
The former president had asked the board to revoke its 2018 national reporting awards given to The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The Pulitzer Prize board rejected his request, declaring the reviews found his complaints unwarranted.
“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,” the board said.
In the lawsuit filed in a court in Okeechobee County, Florida, Trump argued the Pulitzer Prize board “acted with actual malice in issuing the statement with the aim of damaging” his reputation. He asked for an unspecified amount of damages.
According to the 45th President of the United States, the Pulitzer board allowed numerous falsities to stand. He described the body as the “establishment’s establishment.”
“On the facts known to Defendants at the time these reviews were allegedly conducted, it would have been impossible that a single objective, thorough and independent review would have reached such a conclusion, much less two,” the suit declares.
“Defendants knew this and published the Pulitzer Statement anyway,” it adds.
The twenty newspaper stories that won the 2018 award discussed alleged attempts by the Russian regime to meddle in the 2016 election, plus the federal government’s investigation into the claims of collusion between Putin’s Russia and the Trump campaign.
Trump’s complaint said multiple times the award-winning stories in question were “an unprecedented media circus,” that was part of a more extensive witch hunt against him.
“The mission and responsibility of The New York Times is to report thoroughly and impartially on matters of newsworthy importance,” New York Times spokesman Charlie Stadtlander commented in response to Trump’s lawsuit.
“The foreign manipulation of the 2016 elections was both consequential and unprecedented in United States history. Our journalists thoroughly pursued credible claims, fact-checked, edited and ultimately produced groundbreaking journalism that was proven true time and again,” the NYT official added.
Former President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize board alleging defamation due to a statement the organization made after a review of previous defamation claims made by him. https://t.co/SUNDLpgc5H pic.twitter.com/eXueqavwb6
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) December 14, 2022
