Pulitzer Board Demands Disclosure of ‘Unredacted’ Mueller Report to Fight Trump’s Defamation Lawsuit

(Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)

The Pulitzer Prize Board is demanding a “complete and unredacted copy of the Mueller Report” as part of discovery as it fights President Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit over its refusal to rescind prizes awarded to the Washington Post and New York Times for reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In 2018, the newspapers shared the prize, awarded for their “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage” of the subject.

The new request, however, filed in Florida on Friday, challenges Trump’s claim that the board’s defense of its 2018 awards caused him reputational harm. Trump has repeatedly dismissed the reporting by The Times and The Post as a “Russia Collusion Hoax.”

At the heart of the case against the Pulitzer board is a statement it issued after Trump demanded the awards be retracted.

The board argued at the time that its independent reviews found “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” and concluded plainly: “The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand.”

Trump claimed in return that the endorsement wrongly implied “criminal, wrongful, and un-American conduct” and damaged his standing, citing the Pulitzer as the “pinnacle of American journalistic achievement.”

The board’s discovery demands now seek to test those claims by forcing Trump to produce not only the full Mueller report but also communications with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team and records tied to key episodes examined by investigators, including contacts with Russia-linked figures.

While Mueller did not allege a criminal conspiracy, his report stated “that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome” – although noted that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.”

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