Pulitzer stands by bogus reporting on Russia hoax

 Fox News:

Former President Trump scolded the Pulitzer Prize Board Monday for standing by its 2018 National Reporting prizes given to The New York Times and Washington Post for "largely debunked" coverage of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

"The Pulitzer Board has taken away any shred of credibility it had left with its ‘response’ regarding the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, which was awarded to The New York Times and The Washington Post for blatant fake news," Trump told Fox News Digital.

"Instead of acting with integrity and providing transparency, the Pulitzer Board is running cover for the biggest reporting failure in modern history: the fake Russia Russia Russia collusion hoax. Why would The Washington Post or The New York Times ever want to admit their obvious mistakes and come clean when their false reporting is being guarded, and awarded, by the Pulitzer Prize, which at one point actually meant something? These outlets should hand back their prizes without notification from Pulitzer, which would be the honorable thing to do," Trump continued. "The only way The New York Times and The Washington Post should get a possible Pulitzer Prize would be in a new category—disinformation, for helping to perpetrate a false story created and peddled by Crooked Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and certain lowlife Democrats."

A separate source familiar with President Trump’s legal strategy indicated to Fox News Digital that "all options are on the table to ensure proper transparency and restore the integrity of the Pulitzer Prize" after the board’s Monday announcement that it would stand by the 2018 award.

"The truth is that the 2018 Pulitzer Prize was handed out for reporting that merely parroted political disinformation—disinformation that we know was fabricated by foreign operatives and my political opponents. If the Pulitzer Prize has become a blatant acknowledgement of false, liberal political propaganda, then the Pulitzer Board should just say so," Trump said. "Instead, they hide their supposed ‘independent investigations’ in a veil of secrecy, so the public cannot know the truth. I will continue doing everything possible to right the wrong caused by the 2018 Pulitzer Prize."
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Trump’s attorneys, John P. Rowley III and John S. Irving, blasted the Pulitzer Prize Board for honoring "largely debunked" reporting that accused Trump’s campaign of colluding with the Russian government in order to gain an advantage in the 2016 election.

"The idea that President Trump plotted with Vladimir Putin to skew the 2016 election in his favor was always preposterous. Since 2018, if not before, it has been clear that the articles upon which the Pulitzer Board based its Prize include numerous false statements that are defamatory to our client," the letter said. "We assume that in awarding the Prize, the Board was misled by frenzied media reports alleging that President Trump colluded with Russia. That was never plausible, and it has since been proven to have been a cynical invention of Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and the DNC."

The letter makes a series of points that Trump’s legal team feels makes the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories unworthy of the prestigious honor. It cited Special Counsel Robert Mueller failing to find evidence of collusion, a DOJ Inspector General Report, a 2019 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order and the actions of multiple individuals such as Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko as evidence to support the claim that the Times and Post aren’t worthy of journalism awards for the Russian collusion narrative.

Subsequent reporting on Russiagate has found that many claims of the Christopher Steele dossier that drove some of the early narratives about Trump-Russia collusion were spurious, mere rumors or even outright falsehoods, and that figures like Sussmann and Danchenko acted on behalf of the Clinton campaign and pushed collusion narratives that filtered down to the media.

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It was a mistake not to pull back the awards when it was shown that the stories were based on a political fraud perpetrated by his opponent Hillary Clinton.  The failure to withdraw the awards taints the Pulitzer prize.  They should instead have given the prize to reporting that exposed the hoax.