President Donald Trump could be forced to give up his tax returns and medical records in a Pulitzer defamation lawsuit over the Russia investigation reporting awards, according to a report Monday.
Pulitzer Prize board members filed court documents in Okeechobee County, Florida, and after Dec. 11, Trump now has 30 days from that date to respond to the claims and document requests, Law & Crime reported.
Defendants — who include 20 different people from multiple media organizations — have demanded all of Trump's tax returns "from all jurisdictions, including all attachments, schedules, and worksheets" from 2015 to most recent, documents pointing to "sufficient to show all sources of Your income," in addition to documents from the same time frame that are "sufficient to show all of Your financial holdings." They are also requesting his listed liabilities, plus his health records and prescription medication history.
The plaintiff's attorneys at Weber, Crabb & Wein, P.A. have raised privilege claims.
"With respect to your responses to the following Requests, if any information is withheld because of a claim of privilege, state the basis for your claim of privilege with respect to such information and the specific ground(s) on which the claim of privilege rests," the filing said.
Trump filed the lawsuit in 2022, after the Pulitzer Prize Board rejected his demands to rescind prizes for The New York Times and The Washington Post in 2018. He claimed the Pulitzer board was "perpetuating the absurdly false and defamatory narrative contrived by the President's political opponents: that he and his campaign somehow colluded with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government to gain advantage in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and thereafter maintained some nefarious connection with Russian elements during the presidential transition and Trump administration (the 'Russia Collusion Hoax')."
The Pulitzer board responded by explaining it had vetted the investigative reporting with two separate reviews. The group found that none of the award-winning reporting was "discredited."
The following people are named as defendants: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander, The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum, longtime Boston Globe editor Nancy Barnes, former Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger, author and journalist Katherine Boo, Poynter Institute president Neil Brown, former USA Today Editor-in-Chief Nicole Carroll, former Columbia Journalism School dean Steve Coll, New York Times opinion columnist Gail Collins, Vice President and Editor at Large for Standards at the Associated Press John Daniszewski, Editor and Vice President at the Philadelphia Inquirer Gabriel Escobar, UCLA historian and professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez, longtime Pulitzer Prize Deputy Administrator Edward Kliment, New York Times columnist Carlos Lozada, former Los Angeles Times Executive Editor Kevin Merida, Pulitzer Prize Administrator Marjorie Miller, USC professor Viet Thahn Nguyen, CEO and co-founder of The 19th Emily Ramshaw, New Yorker editor David Remnick, and Harvard University philosophy professor Tommie Shelby.
