Former President Donald Trump threatened to sue the Pulitzer Prize Board if they do not revoke the prizes awarded to The New York Times and The Washington Post over their reporting that fueled the hoax that Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election.
In a letter dated May 27 but released Tuesday, Trump wrote to Pulitzer Prize administrator Marjorie Miller:
There is no dispute that the Pulitzer Board’s award to those media outlets was based on false and fabricated information that they published.
The continuing publication and recognition of the prizes on the Board’s website is a distortion of fact and a personal defamation that will result in the filing of litigation if the Board cannot be persuaded to do the right thing on its own.
In light of additional recent evidence that the articles for which that prize was awarded contained incontrovertibly false information that misled the public, I again call on your organization to maintain its own credibility by rescinding that prize to The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Trump’s efforts come after the former President called on the board to rescind both organizations’ 2018 prizes in October and November of last year. In his most recent letter, Trump drew attention to the criminal trial of Michal Sussman, a former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer whom the U.S. Department of Justice prosecuted on charges of lying to the FBI.
Trump said:
I call on your Board to pay close attention to the developments in the ongoing criminal trial of Michael Sussman, the former attorney for the 2016 Clinton Campaign. Mr. Sussman is being prosecuted for lying to the FBI regarding false information purporting to show connections between me and Alfa Bank in Russia, as well as lying about approaching the FBI as a concerned citizen and hiding the fact that he was doing the bidding of the Clinton Campaign and Hillary Clinton herself.
A jury that included three Clinton donors acquitted Sussman on Tuesday.
Trump bolstered his argument to the Pulitzer board by highlighting several developments that further destroyed the Russia collusion narrative. For example, Trump pointed out that Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager Robby Mook testified that Clinton personally approved the decision to feed reporters false information about connections between Trump and the Russia-based Alfa Bank.
Trump also pointed to former Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elisas’s admission that he hired Fusion GPS to create the debunked Steele dossier.
Trump said the two outlets would have “quickly discovered” the Russia hoax’s falsity if they “had they done even a modicum of journalistic investigation.” He went on:
We gain more and more clarity with each passing day about the propaganda and falsehoods that were pushed by the Clintons and their willing accomplices in the media about the “collusion” that never existed between me, my campaign, my administration, and the Russian government.
Trump said:
Surely there must come a point where it is simply embarrassing to your organization to stand by a prestigious Pulitzer Prize awarded to two alleged news organizations that have been conclusively and definitively complicit in promulgating lies about me. The Pulitzer Prizes should not be known as a fake organization awarding its one sterling award for patently false stories.
Trump noted that the Pulitzer board underwent “a standing process for reviewing questions about past awards” after Trump’s first request and said the board has “an obligation to share with me the status of that supposedly ‘appointed committee’s’ review following its alleged’ standing process.’”
He also implored the Pulitzer board to “carefully study” DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s handling of the Russian collusion hoax that found McCabe “lacked candor” on multiple occasions.
“I again call on you to rescind the Prize you awarded based on blatantly fake, derogatory and defamatory news. If you choose to not do so, we will see you in court,” Trump concluded.
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