President Donald Trump was handed a major win in court on Monday as a Florida judge ruled against a motion filed by members of the Pulitzer Prize Board in an attempt to prevent Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board from moving forward to the discovery phase.
According to Fox News, members of the Pulitzer Prize Board filed a motion last week for a protective order governing discovery to prevent internal communications regarding the board’s decision to award a Pulitzer Prize to The New York Times and the Washington Post for reports on Trump’s alleged connection with Russia during his first term as president from being revealed.
Fox News reported that 19th Judicial Circuit Court Judge Robert L. Pegg ruled against the motion, writing, “The rule requires ‘an affirmative showing of annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense’ from such party or person.”
“Defendants have failed to meet this requirement, as there is no factual support in the record demonstrating that any defendant, much less each defendant, would be subject to annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense if a protective order is not entered,” Pegg added.
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Following Monday’s ruling, Trump’s attorney, Quincy Bird, told Fox News that the 47th president is “committed to holding those who traffic in deception and fake news to account.”
“The defendants, hiding behind the once-prestigious Pulitzer Prizes, attempted to resurrect a left-wing hoax by giving, as well as continuing to stand by and republishing, its disgraced award to the organizations that drove the infamous ‘Russia Russia Russia’ hoax,” Bird said.
The Trump attorney claimed that the reporting by The New York Times and The Washington Post was a “defamatory scam” that was intended to hurt Trump’s image and presidential campaign. In light of Monday’s ruling, Bird said the defamation case will now move toward the discovery process. Bird added that Trump remains committed to “seeing this case through to a just conclusion.”
According to Fox News, Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board’s decision to award the 2018 National Reporting prizes to The New York Times and The Washington Post for covering the “now-debunked theory” of the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia was initially filed in 2022. The defamation lawsuit argued that the two outlets’ reporting was based on a “demonstrably false connection.”
“A large swath of Americans had a tremendous misunderstanding of the truth at the time the Times’ and the Post’s propagation of the Russia Collusion Hoax dominated the media,” the lawsuit states. “Remarkably, they were rewarded for lying to the American public.”
