Trump's Suit Against Pulitzer Board Faces a Hurdle: His Previous Arguments
Litigation has long been one of President Trump's favorite weapons against media outlets whose coverage he objects to. But in at least one case, he is encountering an unforeseen obstacle: his previous arguments in court.
On Monday, the board that awards the Pulitzer Prizes — which Mr. Trump sued in Florida in 2022 for defamation — said that the case should be put on hold because, as Mr. Trump has argued in two other cases, a state court should not be permitted to exert control over a sitting president.
'Defendants agree,' wrote the law firm representing the board, Ballard Spahr. 'To avoid such constitutional conflicts, the court should stay this case until plaintiff's term in office has concluded.'
Mr. Trump's lawsuit accuses the Pulitzer board of defaming him, in essence, by continuing to honor The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. A state judge in Florida last year cleared the case to proceed toward trial.
The Pulitzer board's filing on Monday leaned heavily on statements the president's legal team had made in other cases. One involved a suit filed in 2017 by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on 'The Apprentice' reality show, who accused the president of unwanted sexual advances. Mr. Trump's team argued that her suit should be thrown out or delayed because dealing with it — including by producing records during discovery or being forced to appear in court — would 'disrupt and impair' Mr. Trump's ability to do his job. (The suit was settled in 2021, after he was out of office.)
Mr. Trump's lawyers repeated that argument last week in a different case in Delaware, in which he and his social media company are defendants.
R. Quincy Bird, a lawyer for Mr. Trump in the Pulitzer case, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Pulitzer board's filing on Monday was the second time since the November election that Mr. Trump's opponents in defamation lawsuits have sought to turn his arguments in other cases against him.
The previous time came last month, and it involved a different set of legal issues than those at play in the Pulitzer suit.
Mr. Trump is being sued for defamation by the men known as the Central Park Five, who were wrongly convicted and later exonerated in the rape and assault of a jogger in 1989, but whom Mr. Trump described as killers during the presidential debate last September.
Mr. Trump sought to have that lawsuit dismissed, arguing that his comments in the debate were largely true.
Last month, Shanin Specter, the lead lawyer for the five men, argued that was a matter for a jury to decide.
To support this reasoning, Mr. Specter pointed to Mr. Trump's line of argument in a defamation lawsuit he brought against ABC News and the anchor George Stephanopoulos. When ABC noted that Mr. Stephanopoulos had been largely correct in saying Mr. Trump had been found liable for rape — in fact, he had been found liable for sexual abuse — Mr. Trump's lawyers successfully argued that should be left to a jury.
The case was moving toward trial when ABC agreed to pay $15 million to settle the lawsuit last month.
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