
President Donald Trump listens to a question from a newsman arsenic helium meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte successful the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025, successful Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
Pulitzer Prize Board members filed tribunal documents successful Okeechobee County, Florida, connected Thursday, containing a litany of wide find demands successful an effort to bushed backmost President Donald Trump's defamation suit implicit Russia probe reporting awards.
The 12-page document was submitted by the instrumentality firms of Ballard Spahr and Atherton Galardi Mullen & Reeder connected behalf of 20 defendants.
The defendants include: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander, The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum, longtime Boston Globe exertion Nancy Barnes, former Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger, writer and writer Katherine Boo, Poynter Institute president Neil Brown, erstwhile USA Today Editor-in-Chief Nicole Carroll, erstwhile Columbia Journalism School dean Steve Coll, New York Times sentiment columnist Gail Collins, Vice President and Editor astatine Large for Standards astatine the Associated Press John Daniszewski, Editor and Vice President astatine the Philadelphia Inquirer Gabriel Escobar, UCLA historiographer and prof Kelly Lytle Hernandez, longtime Pulitzer Prize Deputy Administrator Edward Kliment, New York Times columnist Carlos Lozada, erstwhile Los Angeles Times Executive Editor Kevin Merida, Pulitzer Prize Administrator Marjorie Miller, USC prof Viet Thahn Nguyen, CEO and co-founder of The 19th Emily Ramshaw, New Yorker exertion David Remnick, and Harvard University doctrine prof Tommie Shelby.
The "first acceptable of requests for accumulation of documents" gives Trump 30 days, arsenic of Dec. 11, to respond and contemplates the plaintiff's attorneys astatine Weber, Crabb & Wein, P.A., raising privilege claims.
"With respect to your responses to the pursuing Requests, if immoderate accusation is withheld due to the fact that of a assertion of privilege, authorities the ground for your assertion of privilege with respect to specified accusation and the circumstantial ground(s) connected which the assertion of privilege rests," the filing said.
The committee defendants are demanding documentation connected subjects ranging from Trump's demands to rescind the awards, to his threats to sue, to impervious that the committee connection astatine contented "had a important interaction connected the 2020 statesmanlike election," and to Trump's assorted lawsuits — whether counterclaims and defenses against E. Jean Carroll, a failed defamation lawsuit against CNN, a settled suit against ABC, a settled suit against CBS, and an ongoing suit against the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch implicit Jeffrey Epstein day missive reporting.
The defendants further demanded "all" of Trump's taxation returns — "from each jurisdictions, including each attachments, schedules, and worksheets" — from 2015 to the contiguous day, documents "sufficient to amusement each sources of Your income" implicit the aforesaid clip period, documents "sufficient to amusement each of Your fiscal holdings" and his liabilities, and yet his wellness records and medicine medicine history.
"To the grade You question damages for immoderate carnal ailment oregon intelligence oregon affectional wounded arising from Counts I-IV of Your Complaint, each Documents (whether held by You oregon by 3rd parties nether Your power oregon who could nutrient them astatine your direction) concerning Your aesculapian and/or intelligence wellness from January 1, 2015, to present, including immoderate medicine medications you person been prescribed oregon person taken," the filing concluded. "For the avoidance of doubt, this includes each Documents Concerning Your yearly carnal examination. To the grade you bash not question specified damages successful this action, delight corroborate truthful successful writing."
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A Trump ineligible spokesperson told Fox News that this "powerhouse lawsuit" volition scope a "winning conclusion."
"This lawsuit has ever been astir correcting the record, revealing the truth, and vindicating the president and his supporters against the lies told to the American radical by the Democrats and their PR instrumentality known arsenic 'legacy media,'" the connection reportedly said.
Trump filed the glacially paced suit successful 2022, aft the Pulitzer Prize Board released a statement rebuffing his demands to rescind 2018 prizes for the New York Times and the Washington Post, adjacent arsenic the then-former president claimed the committee was "perpetuating the absurdly mendacious and defamatory communicative contrived by the President's governmental opponents: that helium and his run someway colluded with Vladimir Putin and the Russian authorities to summation vantage successful the 2016 U.S. statesmanlike election, and thereafter maintained immoderate nefarious transportation with Russian elements during the statesmanlike modulation and Trump medication (the 'Russia Collusion Hoax')."
The board's connection cited "two autarkic reviews" of the Times and Post's reporting to reason that the prizes "stand," arsenic "no" aspects of the award-winning articles connected former peculiar counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe were "discredited":
The Pulitzer Prize Board has an established, ceremonial process by which complaints against winning entries are cautiously reviewed. In the past 3 years, the Pulitzer Board has received inquiries, including from erstwhile President Donald Trump, astir submissions from The New York Times and The Washington Post connected Russian interference successful the U.S. predetermination and its connections to the Trump campaign—submissions that jointly won the 2018 National Reporting prize.
These inquiries prompted the Pulitzer Board to committee 2 autarkic reviews of the enactment submitted by those organizations to our National Reporting competition. Both reviews were conducted by individuals with nary transportation to the institutions whose enactment was nether examination, nor immoderate transportation to each other. The abstracted reviews converged successful their conclusions: that nary passages oregon headlines, contentions oregon assertions successful immoderate of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged consequent to the conferral of the prizes.
The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes successful National Reporting stand.
Trump's ineligible squad has since moved to depose Stephen J. Adler, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Steering Committee's chairman and a erstwhile longtime newsman and exertion astatine the Wall Street Journal identified by Semafor successful January arsenic a confidential reviewer of the Times and Post articles successful question.
When Trump projected a subpoena of Adler, the defendants sought a protective bid to support "confidential" the Pulitzer Prize Board's "internal deliberations and review," making the lawsuit that disclosure thereof could "chill the candor of aboriginal Board deliberations and autarkic reviews." Senior 19th Judicial Circuit Judge Robert Pegg rejected that petition successful aboriginal February, pointing retired the Pulitzer Prize Board is "not a legally cognizable entity," and truthful the "'internal deliberations of the Pulitzer Prize Board' is decently work arsenic the 'internal deliberations of the co-Defendants' which are different discoverable […] and not covered by a assertion of privilege oregon statutory protection," the docket reviewed by Law&Crime showed.
When the justice successful the lawsuit declined to dismiss, helium concluded that the board's connection lasting by the prizes constituted "actionable mixed opinion."
"Defendants cannot assertion the connection is axenic sentiment erstwhile they withheld accusation from their assemblage that would person provided an capable factual instauration for a communal scholar to determine whether to hold oregon disagree with Defendants' determination to fto 2018 Pulitzer Prizes successful National Reporting stand, and whether the awarded reporting had successful information been discredited by facts that emerged from the Mueller Report oregon the different authorities investigations that had been made nationalist since the conferral of those prizes," Pegg ruled successful July 2024, noting that Mueller's probe did not yet allege conspiracy betwixt the then-45th president's 2016 run and Russia — though the peculiar counsel's report did place "numerous links betwixt the Russian authorities and the Trump campaign."
After trips to authorities appellate tribunal and the Florida Supreme Court, the defamation suit returned to Pegg's tribunal successful earnest backmost successful September.

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