Former President Donald Trump wanted to reveal the identities of anonymous independent reviewers who upheld awards of Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of the former president's campaign ties to Russia, as part of a lawsuit he filed against the Pulitzer board.
According to Business Insider, "In transcripts of four depositions obtained by Business Insider, Trump's attorneys had the opportunity to question journalists about a mystery that has vexed them for years: Who are the anonymous consultants who reviewed the Pulitzer Prizes awarded to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of Trump's connections to Russia?"
"The depositions were taken last year for a lawsuit Trump brought in December 2022, suing the Pulitzer Prize Board, which administers American journalism's highest honors," the report continued. "He accused the board and its 18 members of defaming him by awarding the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting to The Washington Post and The New York Times for their coverage of Russia's interference in the 2016 election and the country's connections to Trump's presidential campaign and administration."
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Generally, suing journalists over inaccurate coverage is extremely difficult due to high standards for "actual malice" established by the Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan.
Contrary to Trump's claim in the lawsuit that Russiagate was "fully debunked," many allegations about Trump's links to Russia were proven in the Mueller report.
"Much of Trump's lawsuit focuses on a July 2022 statement from the Pulitzer board, where it announced the prizes would stand after Trump called on it to rescind the awards," according to the report. "The board announced that it commissioned 'two independent reviews' of the work submitted by the Times and the Post that won the 2018 prize, which 'were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other.' Each review independently concluded the prize-winning stories were not 'discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes,' the board said."
