Pulitzer Prize committee urges court to pause Trump’s defamation suit against them over ‘Russia! Russia! Russia!’

They cited in the Monday filing arguments lawyers for Trump have made in two other cases, that a state court cannot exercise jurisdiction over a sitting president constitutionally, The Hill reported.

One example cited was a suit lodged against Trump during his first term by a former The Apprentice contestant accusing him of unwanted sexual advances, during which Trump’s team argued that without a pause on the case, the lawsuit would "disrupt and impair" Trump’s ability to "discharge his Article II responsibilities." That suit has since been settled.

The attorneys also cited the example of Trump’s legal team earlier in January requesting a pause in a case against him and his social media company brought forth by former investors. The attorneys wrote, "Likewise, just days ago, Plaintiff reiterated these points in a case against him in Delaware state court, arguing that, because litigation would unconstitutionally interfere with his presidential duties, ‘[c]ommonsense favors a stay of this case until the end of the President’s term,’ so that ‘President Trump can devote his time and energies to America’s problems.’"

The attorneys wrote, "According to Plaintiff, ‘[t]he appropriate answer’ to these constitutional concerns ‘is to postpone’ such a state court case ‘until [the President] is no longer in office.’" They added, "Defendants agree. To avoid such constitutional conflicts, the Court should stay this case until Plaintiff’s term in office has concluded."

The lawsuit was launched by Trump in 2022 over a statement put out by Pulitzer board members in the wake of conducting two independent reviews that were requested by Trump and others. The independent reviews were requested for Pulitzer Prizes that were awarded for stories about debunked Russia collusion story in the 2016 presidential election.

The board rejected Trump’s request to revoke the national reporting awards handed down in 2018 to the staffs of the New York Times and the Washington Post for their coverage, with the reviews concluding 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 lawsuit alleges that the board acted with actual malice in their issuance of the statement, and that they aimed to damage Trump’s reputation.