Ruling caps string of losses for Pulitzer board in Russiagate lawsuit
The Florida supreme court ruled against the Pulitzer Prize board Tuesday in its last-ditch effort to delay President Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the organization until after he leaves the White House.
In a ruling joined by five of the seven justices, the court rejected the board’s request to review an appeals court decision that said Trump’s lawsuit can proceed. Trump sued the board in 2022 over awards that the journalism group gave the New York Times and the Washington Post in 2018 for stories that promoted the debunked Russiagate narrative. Trump alleged the board “rewarded” the newspapers “for lying to the American public.”
This caps a string of legal losses for the 19-member board in its attempt to end or delay the Trump lawsuit. A district court judge in Okeechobee County ruled against the board’s efforts to end the lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds earlier this year. After that argument failed, the board mounted the novel legal theory that the lawsuit should be put on hold until Trump leaves office because the case would distract him from his presidential duties.
Florida’s fourth district appeals court rejected that argument in a May 29 ruling. “The President—by virtue of his exceptional position—is uniquely equipped to determine how to use his time, to assess the attention a lawsuit will require, and to decide whether the lawsuit will divert him from his official business,” the appeals court said.
The state supreme court decision now puts the case back in the hands of the district court, where the case has been slated for a jury trial. A trial date has not been set.
Should the case proceed to the trial phase, it could unveil unflattering details about the Pulitzer committee’s awards process—a system that the prestigious journalism body has gone to great lengths to keep under wraps.
“This was a correct and just decision by the Florida Supreme Court,” Trump attorney Quincy Bird said in a statement. “We now continue a very illuminating discovery process.”
Pulitzer administrator Marjorie Miller attempted to muzzle Washington Free Beacon editor in chief Eliana Johnson, whom the board tapped as a jurist last year, after she raised questions about a poetry Pulitzer awarded to Mosab Abu Toha, a Hamas sympathizer who mocked the Israeli victims of Oct. 7. Miller accused Johnson, who was a jurist for the Pulitzer’s national reporting category, of violating the organization’s confidentiality agreement. Johnson noted that her agreement covered only the national reporting category.
Trump has racked up a series of legal wins against media organizations. ABC News settled with Trump over an interview in which ABC host George Stephanopoulos called Trump a rapist. CBS News settled with Trump for $16 million over what the president alleged was a deceptively edited interview the network conducted with Kamala Harris.
The board’s prizes to the Times and Post have come under increased scrutiny over the years amid a steady drip of evidence that undercuts the theory that Trump colluded with Russia in 2016. The awards, given in the national reporting category, identified 17 stories that largely focused on Trump and his campaign’s alleged interactions with Russians. While some of the stories have proved accurate, others leveled bombshell claims that have since been undermined by new evidence.
A Post story from May 23, 2017, that alleged Trump ordered intelligence officials to deny that he colluded with Russia has been debunked by one of those officials, former National Security Agency director Michael Rogers. Rogers has testified that he was never instructed to deny collusion. Nevertheless, multiple federal and congressional investigations determined that Trump did not collude with Russia.
Another Post story touted the FBI’s arrangement with former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of a controversial anti-Trump dossier funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign. The story said the FBI agreed to pay Steele for his services in 2016, a revelation that showed the FBI considered Steele “to be credible.” Steele’s dossier has been widely debunked.
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