Former President Donald Trump threatened to sue the Pulitzer Prize board for rewarding the New York Times and Washington Post’s coverage of alleged Russian collusion in April 2018.
In a May 27 letter to Pulitzer administrator Marjorie Miller, the former president said he requested the board to remove the awards given to the two newspapers by arguing their coverage was based on “false and fabricated information.” The former president made the same request in two separate letters sent in October and November 2021.
“There is no dispute that the Pulitzer Board’s award to those media outlets was based on false and fabricated information that they published,” Trump said. “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.”
The letter also calls for the board to “pay close attention to the developments in the ongoing criminal trial of Michael Sussman [sic], the former attorney for the 2016 [Hillary] Clinton Campaign.” He argued the newspapers would have quickly known about the campaign’s “shameful smears” if they had conducted “even a modicum of journalistic investigation” into the reports.
Donald Trump threatens to sue the Pulitzer board unless they rescind the prizes they gave the NYT and WaPo for stories falsely asserting Trump collided with Russia. pic.twitter.com/dWZHPwAdFZ
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) May 31, 2022
“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,” the letter continued. “Even the New York Times and Washington Post have effectively admitted this fact.
“Surely there must come to 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.”
He then directed the board to “carefully study” a report released by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz calling out former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s handling of the Trump-Russian collusion allegations.
“I again call on you to rescind the Prize you awarded based on blatantly fake, derogatory and defamatory news. If you choose not to do so, we will see you in court,” the letter concluded.
Miller confirmed to the Daily Caller that she received a letter from Trump and forwarded it to the board, but did not elaborate any further. (RELATED: FLASHBACK: WaPo, NYT Awarded Pulitzer Prizes For Trump-Russia Collusion Reports)
Former Clinton Campaign lawyer Michael Sussman was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI about a secret communications channel between the Trump campaign and the Russian bank, Alfa Bank, and hiding that he was representing the former Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign. Special Counsel John Durham brought forth charges against the former Clinton attorney and held a trial in federal court.
Clinton’s former campaign manager, Robby Mook, testified that then-presidential nominee personally approved of spreading material claiming the Trump campaign had the secret communications channel with Alfa to media outlets, despite her team expressing uncertainty with the idea.
In 2019, Attorney General William Barr publicly read a summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusions to Congress, which found that the two-year investigation found no evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia.