A Florida appellate court on May 28 sided with President Donald Trump in a defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board over awards given to The New York Times and The Washington Post for stories alleging Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
The ruling from the Fourth District Court of Appeal for the State of Florida marks yet another win for Trump in the legal dispute, which began in late 2022.
In a seven-page opinion, the court denied a motion from the Pulitzer board requesting that the case be put on hold while Trump is in office based on presidential immunity grounds.
“In their petition, Petitioners assert they are entitled to a stay of the underlying proceedings, including discovery, because the Plaintiff-Respondent is the current President of the United States,” the court wrote in its opinion. “They argue a stay of the case will avoid the constitutional conflicts arising from allowing Respondent [Trump] to proceed as a plaintiff in a state court civil action on claims that may involve his official conduct as the President.”
“We deny the petition and affirm the trial court’s order,” the court ruled.
Trump sued the Pulitzer board after it declined to rescind the 2018 National Reporting prizes presented to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their reporting on allegations of Trump–Russia collusion.
According to the Pulitzer Prize Board, the 2018 National Reporting Prizes were awarded to the two organizations 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.”
Claims of collusion between Trump and Russia have been widely debunked.
Pulitzer Defends Awards
Trump’s lawsuit referenced a statement by the board in which it said it had received inquiries, including from Trump, about the awards presented to the two organizations.
Those inquiries prompted the board to commission two independent reviews of the work submitted by those organizations to its National Reporting competition, the statement said.
“Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other,” the board’s statement reads. “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.”
Trump’s lawsuit alleged the board acted with actual malice in issuing the statement with the intention to harm him and his reputation.
He sought an unspecified amount of compensatory damages.
Shortly after Trump was reelected to the White House in January, the board moved to put the legal proceedings on hold until his term was complete. In a filing with the court, the board noted Trump had made similar arguments in other cases where he is a defendant.
A Florida circuit judge denied the board’s request in March.
In its ruling on May 28, the appeals court said that while government officials may claim in court proceedings the immunities and protections provided to them, “the law is clear that such privileges are not available to third parties to claim, nor may such privileges be asserted by others on the officials’ behalf.”
Trump welcomed the ruling in a statement on social media platform Truth Social, calling it a “major WIN” in the lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board regarding “the illegal and defamatory ‘Award’ of their once highly respected ‘Prize,’ to fake, malicious stories on the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax.”
Trump said the two newspapers won the prestigious awards for “totally incorrect reporting” about the alleged Russian collusion.
The Epoch Times has contacted the Pulitzer Prize Board for comment.
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