Put up or shut up: Pulitzer Board demands Trump fight or drop his suit

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as he meets with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 3, 2026. REUTERS Jonathan Ernst

Law and Crime reports Pulitzer Prize board members are demanding a Florida judge either force President Donald Trump to respond to their discovery demands or to shut down his Russia probe lawsuit until after his second term ends.

In 2022, the ever-litigious Trump sued 19 individual members of the Pulitzer Prize Board for defamation and conspiracy because the board refused to rescind the 2018 joint awards it gave to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In 2024, Trump crowed premature victory when the judge overseeing the case denied the board’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit — but that dismissal was not a win. Pegg’s ruling did not even suggest the Pulitzer Board’s review of its award was flawed.

Two years later, the president appears to have frozen up, having refused to produce “a single written response or document” related to discovery requested by the defendants.

The Board argues that it’s gone out of its way to produce every scrap of information demanded by Trump’s lawyers, but Trump’s people have stalled in handing much of anything.

“Despite these extraordinary extensions for his discovery responses, Plaintiff has yet to produce a single written response or document. Defendants, on the other hand, have engaged in robust discovery,” the Board said. “Over the last year, Defendants have reviewed more than 71,000 records and produced more than 124,000 pages of documents. In addition, six Defendants have sat for merits depositions, two more will be deposed in the next three weeks, and additional Defendants will soon be scheduled to sit for depositions by the end of September.”

Additionally, the Board argues Trump’s lawyers have “deposed two non-party witnesses who authored independent reviews of the 2018 National Reporting Prize and propounded a second set of discovery requests on Defendant David Remnick, to which Remick has already responded.”

Trump’s people, meanwhile, have submitted countless requests for extension while they gather their information.

“In his motion, Plaintiff asserts that he needs yet more time to respond to Defendants’ discovery responses — in total now seeking nearly ten months to respond to the First RFPs and Brown Interrogatories — for the same reason he gave in seeking the last extension,” said the Board. “The needs of the Presidency are purportedly too great to balance with his role as a Plaintiff in his case.”

If Trump is happy to hide behind the White House to avoid putting up his legal fists, the board says he should just keep hiding until the White House is finished with him. And gather his lawyers later.

“If he cannot live up to those responsibilities while also faithfully executing the Office of President of the United States, then the case must be stayed until Plaintiff's term in office has concluded," the defendants said.

Strangely, Trump himself had insisted on moving forward with the case while in office, and argued that point all the way up to Florida's Supreme Court in summer 2025, according to Law and Crime.

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