Embarrassment for Pulitzer Prize Board as Judge Refuses To Move Trump’s Lawsuit Over ‘Dishonest and Defamatory Conduct’ From Florida Court

 At issue is the 2018 Pulitzer Price awarded to the New York Times and Washington Post for their coverage of Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, a prize President Trump has demanded be rescinded.

President Trump scored yet another win in his defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board as a Florida court of appeals on Wednesday shot down arguments that board members living outside of the state were not subject to Florida jurisdiction. 

“The circuit court concluded that the exercise of personal jurisdiction over the eighteen defendants was proper,” the appellate judges ruled on Wednesday. “We agree. Trump’s operative pleading sufficiently pled that the defendants engaged in a conspiracy to defame him.”

Mr. Trump sued the Pulitzer Prize’s board three years ago over its decision to award the 2018 national reporting prize to the New York Times and the Washington Post for their coverage of Russian election interference during Mr. Trump’s first presidential bid. The defamation suit specifically targets a statement released by the board in 2022 defending its prior decision to award the prize to the Times and the Post. 

Wednesday’s ruling upholds the decision by a lower court to deny a motion by the non-Floridian members of the board to dismiss the case on the argument that the board members who drafted, approved, edited, and published the board statement “did so outside of Florida.” The defendants, in their motion filed in January, claimed that the non-residents were not subject to personal jurisdiction in Florida “as a matter of due process.” 

The judges, however, pointed to the fact that “the defendants issued the website public statement in response to the requests of a Florida resident — Trump.” Further, the judges note, “They did so in a meeting attended remotely by a Florida resident (Brown) who also conducted an editing review of the proposed website statement while in Florida.”

Mr. Trump’s lawyers claimed the ruling as an “unequivocal victory” for the president “in his pursuit of justice against the Pulitzer Prize board members for their dishonest and defamatory conduct,” Mr. Trump’s attorney, Quincy Bird, told Fox News. 

“President Trump is committed to holding those who traffic in fake news, lies and smears to account and he looks forward to seeing his powerful cases through to a just conclusion,” Mr. Bird added. 

The news coverage at the center of the case concerns allegations that Russia worked with Mr. Trump to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and to boost Mr. Trump’s chances of an electoral victory. The Pulitzer board describes the slew of articles on the subject published by the Post and the Times as “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.” 

The accusations were eventually subject to an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. In the report, published in 2019, Mr. Mueller concluded that he “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in the election interference activities.” The report did, however, note that Russian interference in the election was “sweeping and systematic” and that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts” and “welcomed” the help.

Mr. Trump has long called on the Pulitzer board to rescind the award and jumped to file a defamation lawsuit against the board after it released a statement in 2022 defending its decision. 

In the statement, the board claimed that it commissioned two independent reviews of the submitted reporting, both of which concluded 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.” The board concluded: “The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand.” 

By issuing the statement, the board made a serious legal error, as it restarted the clock on the statute of limitations, which had passed. 

The 47th president’s lawsuit alleges that the board’s 20 members created a “false implication that there was a connection between President Trump, his 2016 presidential election campaign and Russia.” His complaint alleges that at the time of the board’s statement, “nearly every branch and agency of the federal government had examined this issue and reached the same conclusion: there was no conspiracy or cooperation between President Trump or the Trump Campaign and Russia.”

The latest legal victory comes just a few weeks after Mr. Trump was awarded the right to review all board communications surrounding the decision to award the prestigious prize to the Times and the Post. The ruling, issued by Judge Robert Pegg earlier this month, shot down a prior motion filed by the board seeking to safeguard the materials. 

It will pull back the curtains on the secretive operations of the Pulitzer Prizes, which are administered by Columbia University and lean left, consistently honoring liberal news organizations such as the New York Times (which wins prizes almost every year) and giving multiple awards to reporting on pet liberal causes such as police brutality and gun control and, in recent years, rewarding journalism that reflects negatively on Mr. Trump and his supporters. Winning a Pulitzer can supercharge a journalist’s career and burnish a news organization’s reputation, and news operations often conform their coverage to what their editors and writers believe are the Pulitzer Board’s expectations.

Mr. Trump has been finding success in suing New York-based media organizations in Florida, where judges and juries are less sympathetic to the defendants. ABC settled for $16 million after Mr. Trump sued the Disney network, in Florida, over repeated comments made by George Stephanopoulos, the former Clinton operative, that Mr. Trump had been “found liable for rape” which was false. Similarly, earlier this year, CNN reached a confidential settlement — believed to be in the eight figures — in a defamation claim brought by a contractor who sued the liberal cable network in the bright red Florida panhandle.

https://www.nysun.com/article/embarrassment-for-pulitzer-prize-board-as-judge-refuses-to-move-trumps-lawsuit-over-dishonest-and-defamatory-conduct-from-florida-court