Trump filed a libel suit against the Pulitzer Prize Board

Former U.S. President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board, accusing the jury of defamation and lying to the American public in connection with the 2018 award to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of the investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Trump filed the lawsuit Tuesday in the state of Florida. “Most Americans completely misunderstood what was going on when the media was dominated by the lies spread by the Times and Post about Russian collusion. Remarkably, they were rewarded for lying to the American public,” the lawsuit filed says.

In July, the Pulitzer Prize Board rejected a demand by Trump, who had insisted that the awards for both newspapers be withdrawn. The council said independent reviews found that the newspapers’ materials “were not compromised by facts that became known after the award was made.”

Trump’s lawyers argue that the publication of the council’s statement “prejudiced” the politician. The attorneys claim that the jury’s statement wanted to give the “reader the false impression that President Trump colluded with a hostile foreign government to undermine the U.S. presidential election.” The former President of the United States is seeking damages “in an amount to be determined at trial.”

In November 2021, Trump demanded that the Pulitzer Prize administration revoke the award to two newspapers. In a statement, the former U.S. president pointed out that many of the materials used in the newspapers’ publications, in particular the “dossier” of British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, were found to be unreliable, and the Russian Igor Danchenko, who allegedly helped him with the compilation of the dossier, was accused of providing false information to the FBI.

About the “dossier.”
U.S. investigators believe that Danchenko helped compile a “dossier” with deliberately false allegations of Trump’s collusion with Russia, and subsequently concealed his contacts with a person associated with the Democratic Party of the United States from the FBI. In particular, Danchenko allegedly assured FBI officials that he never discussed the information used in the Trump “dossier” with this public relations specialist, but in fact the document was based on some information “directly obtained” from this person. Danchenko does not admit guilt.

The “dossier” alleged that Russian intelligence services had personal and financial information that discredited Trump. Later, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice told members of Congress that they could not establish the authenticity of the information contained in the materials. The former White House leader himself repeatedly stressed that this “dossier” was a fake and an example of “an all-out political witch hunt.” Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov earlier said that the Kremlin considered the topic of Moscow’s alleged dirt on Trump to be closed.