The New York Times and Washington Post published stories about the Russian aid to Trump’s election in 2016. The Pulitzer Prize Board awarded the two papers a Pulitzer Prize for these stories in 2018.
Trump demanded that the board revoke the awards. The board refused. So Trump filed a lawsuit in 2022, saying that the Pulitzer Prize Board had caused him damages by awarding these stories, which he says were false. Trump claimed, in official documents, that he suffered physical and emotional injuries and financial damage as well as damage to his reputation. The lawsuit is ongoing.
So now the Pulitzer Prize Board has filed for discovery. They say they want the records of Trump’s physical and mental examinations along with his tax records and other financial records to be released to the court. These are, after all, direct evidence related to the claims Trump chose to make.
So how is Trump going to handle this? I’m sure his intent was that his lawsuit would act as a threat and the board would back down and give him what he wants. But now it’s been turned on him. He obviously won’t want to release all of these records, with whatever damaging information he’s been hiding. Will he try to stonewall? Will he declare victory and drop the lawsuit? Will he seek some other way to attack the Pulitzer Prize Board?
I wondering if he’ll want the Supreme Court to rescue him again. Maybe ask for a ruling that all Presidential records, even personal ones, are classified and can’t be called as evidence even in a case the President initiates.
His lawyers will motion to invalidate the discovery request. Some of it may be rejected by the judge as too overreaching but there will be a significant amount of discovery that is deemed to be valid. Enough that it would be embarrassing and he will never release it. His lawyers were either incompetent or afraid for their jobs (why not both?) to explain to him that for a lawsuit to be valid damages must be proven and that he can be compelled to testify.
Basically he thought that they would roll over and settle like others have. He thinks he won the other lawsuits when they were really legal bribes. He ran into a defendant who doesn’t have business deals that they want the government to stay out of.
No, the editorial board of the former has backed down in the past and the latter is owned by Jeff Bezos, who has made many editorial changes to make the paper more billionaire and MAGA friendly. One of the side effects when the papers are owned by people who want government approvals for other ventures
This lawsuit will probably follow the typical pattern when the other side fights back - dither and delay until it is clear that Trump will have to reveal personal information and then drop the lawsuit quietly, all the while simultaneously declaring some sort of ‘win’ and decrying the ‘unfair’ judicial proceedings. We don’t remember the other losses because he floods the zone with noise about his new grievance target
Most people in his position would recognize that as president of the United States of America, they are in the news all the time and they shouldn’t need to invent reasons to be in the news. But he’s not most people.