Trump threatens defamation suits against members of Pulitzer Prize Board for defending Russiagate honors

EXCLUSIVE – Former President Trump ramped up his fight against the Pulitzer Prize Board on Thursday with a letter informing individual members they could be exposed to a defamation suit.

The letter said they could be liable over the 2018 National Reporting prizes given to The New York Times and Washington Post for "totally debunked" coverage of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Earlier this year, the Pulitzer Prize Board declared the awards will stand. Fox News Digital obtained a follow-up letter sent by Trump’s legal team to the Pulitzer Board notifying that a "defamatory statement" justifying the 2018 award remains on its website and warning that it must be removed within five business days or else "individual members may be subject and exposed to a judgment for damages, including punitive damages, for defamation." 

Trump’s team also called for "a full and fair correction, apology, or retraction" to be issued, in addition to the 2018 prizes being rescinded. 

"The Russia, Russia, Russia hoax has been totally debunked. The fake news media covered it incorrectly – reporting exactly the opposite of what actually happened. Yet, the Pulitzer Board has not rescinded the prizes they awarded for reporting that was inaccurate, inept, and corrupt," Trump told Fox News Digital. 

"In order to restore the credibility of the Pulitzer Prizes, the Pulitzer Board should take away prizes from all who got it wrong," Trump continued. "Additionally, it would be appropriate to award new prizes to all those who got it right." 

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The Pulitzer Prize board’s statement in question was first published in July after Trump’s legal team that called for the committee to "correct the record and promote journalistic fairness and integrity."

"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," the Pulitzer Prize Board wrote. 

"These inquiries prompted the Pulitzer Board to commission two independent reviews of the work submitted by those organizations to our National Reporting competition. Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other. The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: 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," the board continued. 

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The latest letter declares, "By ratifying the 2018 prizes awarded to The New York Times and The Washington Post, the Board and its individual members are participating in and perpetuating the absurdly false and defamatory narrative contrived by the President’s political opponents: that he and his campaign somehow colluded with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government to gain advantage in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and thereafter maintained some nefarious connection with Russian elements during the presidential transition and Trump administration." 

Trump’s team has made a series of points indicating why it feels the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories are unworthy of the honor, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller failing to find evidence of collusion, and a DOJ Inspector General Report outlining malfeasance by federal investigators. Trump’s team also feels the actions of multiple individuals embroiled in the discredited Christopher Steele dossier, such as Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko, are evidence to support the claim that the Times and Post aren’t worthy of journalism awards for the Russian collusion narrative. 

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Subsequent reporting on Russiagate has found that many claims of the Steele dossier that drove early narratives about Trump-Russia collusion were spurious, mere rumors or even outright falsehoods, and that figures like Sussmann and Danchenko acted on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and pushed collusion narratives that filtered down to the media.

The staff of the Times and Post shared the award for "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," according to the Pulitzer website. 

Trump’s team said the Times and Post are "two of the foremost propagators of the Russia Collusion Hoax," and blasted the Pulitzer Prize Board for standing by the awards.

"In the face of this irrefutable reality, the arrogance of the Board’s Defamatory Statement is breathtaking," the letter said. "By publishing the Defamatory Statement, the Board and its members acted not only with reckless disregard for the truth, but with authentic animosity and malice toward President Trump and the desire to cause him true harm. As such, the members of the Board are individually liable for the publication of the Defamatory Statement." 

The Pulitzer Prizes did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

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