Left: President Donald Trump speaks after signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci). Right: Former special counsel Robert Mueller appears before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on his report on Russian election interference, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, July 24, 2019 (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik).
If Donald Trump intends to pursue his lawsuit against Pulitzer Prize Board members to the end, the defendants are demanding that the president's legal team hand over a "complete" copy of former special counsel Robert Mueller's report, putting to the test through discovery Trump's claims that a "defamatory" board statement backing Russia probe reporting awards harmed his reputation.
On Friday in Okeechobee County, Florida, where Trump has also filed several notices of board member depositions for the coming weeks, the defendants formally sought a "complete and unredacted copy of the Mueller Report" and "all documents and communications exchanged between" Trump and Mueller's team.
When Trump first filed the lawsuit in 2022, he sought to hold the Pulitzer board member defendants liable for the following statement that backed New York Times and Washington Post awards following independent reviews of the 2017 coverage, a statement rebuffing his demands to rescind the prizes:
The Pulitzer Prize Board has an established, formal process by which complaints against winning entries are carefully reviewed. In the last three years, the Pulitzer Board has received inquiries, including from former President Donald Trump, about submissions from The New York Times and The Washington Post on Russian interference in the U.S. election and its connections to the Trump campaign—submissions that jointly won the 2018 National Reporting prize.These inquiries prompted the Pulitzer Board to commission two independent reviews of the work submitted by those organizations to our National Reporting competition. Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other. The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand.
Trump argued that because the Pulitzer Prize is the "pinnacle of American journalistic achievement," the award "carries very important connotations," and the board member statement "damaged" his "reputation, profession, and business," "wrongfully impl[ying] criminal, wrongful, and un-American conduct" on his part by giving authoritative credence to, in his words, "Russia Collusion Hoax" reporting.
Mueller's investigation did not ultimately allege a grand conspiracy between the 45th and 47th president's 2016 campaign and Russia, but the special counsel's report did highlight "numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign," and the board members seek Trump's documents and communications about this Mueller conclusion among others.
"Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities," the Mueller report said.
The latest discovery demands from the defendants — reminiscent of litigation that several years ago pressed a federal judge to evaluate whether the DOJ during Trump's first term improperly redacted the Mueller report and "distorted" its findings to steer a narrative — come at a time when the current Trump administration has supported burying and relegating to the "dustbin of history" ex-special counsel Jack Smith's volume on the Mar-a-Lago classified documents investigation.
The board members stated their document and communications request "includes but is not limited to […] any negotiation" with Mueller regarding Trump's records production or his "answers to written questions," Russia's 2016 hack of the DNC and the ensuing WikiLeaks dump, information on the Trump Tower Moscow project, Donald Trump Jr.'s 2016 Trump Tower meeting, and more.
"For the avoidance of doubt, this also includes all Documents and Communications Concerning denials of Your involvement in writing and/or editing Donald Trump Jr.'s statement," the filing said.
At the end of the filing, where the defendants look to shed light on "any member" of Trump's transition team or administration and their "connection" to Russia or "Russian elements," the defendants mentioned slain Hollywood director Rob Reiner, whom Trump disparaged as a "deranged person as far as Trump is concerned" following the Reiner family slayings in December.
"All Documents and Communications supporting or otherwise forming the basis for your assertion on Dec. 15, 2025, that Rob Reiner was 'one of the people behind' the 'Russia Hoax,'" the filings said, piling onto prior discovery demands for Trump's tax returns, sources of income, liabilities, health records and any prescription medication history.
The defendants include: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander, The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum, longtime Boston Globe editor Nancy Barnes, former Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger, author and journalist Katherine Boo, Poynter Institute president Neil Brown, former USA Today Editor-in-Chief Nicole Carroll, former Columbia Journalism School dean Steve Coll, New York Times opinion columnist Gail Collins, Vice President and Editor at Large for Standards at the Associated Press John Daniszewski, Editor and Vice President at the Philadelphia Inquirer Gabriel Escobar, UCLA historian and professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez, longtime Pulitzer Prize Deputy Administrator Edward Kliment, New York Times columnist Carlos Lozada, former Los Angeles Times Executive Editor Kevin Merida, Pulitzer Prize Administrator Marjorie Miller, USC professor Viet Thahn Nguyen, CEO and co-founder of The 19th Emily Ramshaw, New Yorker editor David Remnick, and Harvard University philosophy professor Tommie Shelby.
Court records show Trump has tabbed Remnick, Barnes, Kliment, Miller, and Ramshaw for depositions in the weeks ahead.