The Pulitzer Board is asking a court to pause all defamation proceedings in President Donald Trump's lawsuit against them, CNN reported on Monday — and they're citing Trump's own legal theories to make their argument.
Trump filed the lawsuit against them for awarding prizes to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — after his previous attempts to sue those outlets over the coverage directly fell through.
However, according to the report, in the new filing, "the Pulitzer Board pointed out that Trump previously sought stays in other civil lawsuits where he was the defendant, saying the suits should be halted while he is in office because of questions of whether the US Constitution bars state courts from exercising jurisdiction over a sitting president."
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As evidence of this, the lawyers representing the Pulitzer Board pointed out Trump made exactly this argument to try to move to suspend a lawsuit brought against him by investors in Trump Media and Technology Group, the company that runs his Truth Social platform.
"In that case, Trump’s team argued '(c)ommonsense favors a stay of this case until the end of the President’s term,' so that 'President Trump can devote his time and energies to America’s problems,'" the filing said.
Trump's federal criminal cases are dead now that he is in office, in accordance with the Justice Department's opinion against prosecuting sitting presidents.
However, a number of civil actions brought both by and against Trump remain in litigation, including a half-billion-dollar judgment of civil fraud won by New York Attorney General Letitia James, and judgments won by E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and defamation.
