AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
- Donald Trump is calling for Pulitzers given to The Washington Post and The New York Times to be stripped.
- The media outlets were awarded Pulitzers in 2018 for their coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
- Trump alleges there was “false reporting of a non-existent link between the Kremlin and the Trump Campaign.”
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Former President Donald Trump is calling for the Pulitzer Prize awarded to reporters at The New York Times and The Washington Post for their reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election to be rescinded.
In a statement released on October 3, Trump called for the Pulitzer Price board to rescind the 2018 prizes, claiming that it was awarded “based on false reporting of a non-existent link between the Kremlin and the Trump Campaign.”
Journalists at The Post and The Times received the award for a series of articles published between February 8, 2017, and September 7, 2017. The Pulitzer Prize committee lauded the journalists for their “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.”
Trump is now claiming that the headlines were “extremely sensational and leaned heavily on unsubstantiated anonymous sources.” He also requested the reports be withdrawn because they were awarded based on articles about the “now-debunked Russian collusion conspiracy theory.”
“Numerous conservative news outlets and commentators questioned the legitimacy of these reports,” wrote Trump, adding that he thought there were “clear, logical fallacies” in them.
“It has since been confirmed that the allegations were false, and I have been exonerated of these charges,” the former president wrote.
However, Trump was never wholly exonerated. Special counsel Robert Mueller, who spearheaded the investigation into allegations of collusion during the 2016 election, did not recommend prosecutors charge or not charge Trump based on the evidence he saw. Mueller even commented that the report “would have said so” if he had confidence that Trump did not commit a crime.
Meanwhile, Trump’s fresh demands to the Pulitzer committee appear to be founded on the recent indictment of Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer who was previously employed by the Clinton campaign. Special Counsel John Durham has accused Sussmann of lying to the FBI about who he was working for when he tipped the bureau off about potential covert communications between the Trump organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank.
Per The New York Times, Sussmann has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers have accused Durham, a Trump-era appointee, of going after their client for political reasons.
The Post and The Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
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