The same day Donald Trump was subpoenaed by the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, attorneys for the former president threatened legal action against the Pulitzer Prize Board.
A letter sent to the organization's New York address at Columbia University stated Trump was considering litigation under Florida's defamation law.
The letter complains about a statement the board published on its website about complaints it awarded 2018 Pulitzer Prizes to The New York Times and Washington Post.
"These inquiries prompted the Pulitzer Board to commission two independent reviews of the work submitted by those organizations to our National Reporting competition," the Pulitzer board said. "Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other. The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: 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."
Trump argued the opposite was true and the reporting had been "totally debunked."
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"The fake news media covered it incorrectly—reporting exactly the opposite of what actually happened," Trump argued in a statement emailed to reporters. "Yet, the Pulitzer Board has not rescinded the prizes they awarded for reporting that was inaccurate, inept, and corrupt. In order to restore the credibility of the Pulitzer Prizes, the Pulitzer Board should take away prizes from all who got it wrong."
The conservative Washington Examiner reported on Trump's letter under the headline, "Appetite for distraction: Trump rails against Pulitzer committee after Jan. 6 subpoena."
Trump attorneys R. Quincy Bird and Jeremy D. Bailie ended their letter with, "please govern yourself accordingly."
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