Former President Donald Trump’s legal team sent a defamatory notice to the Pulitzer Prize Board on Thursday.
“Russia, Russia, Russia,” Trump said Thursday in reference to the Pulitzer Prizes that were awarded to the New York Times and The Washinton Post on Russian interference stories.
“The Russia, Russia, Russia hoax has been totally debunked. The fake news media covered it incorrectly—reporting exactly the opposite of what actually happened,” Trump said.
“In order to restore the credibility of the Pulitzer Prizes, the Pulitzer Board should take away prizes from all who got it wrong. Additionally, it would be appropriate to award new prizes to all those who got it right,” Trump added.
Trump’s legal team pointed out a statement on the Pulitzer Prize Board website that states, “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.”
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“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 statement concludes.
Trump’s legal team warns that the Board, including individual members, may be subject to suit and damages for this statement.
Starting at least by July 2016 and continuing through March 2019, the FBI and then the office of Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller conducted a counterintelligence investigation targeting the 2016 Presidential campaign of 2016 Republican Party nominee and eventual President Donald J. Trump.
Given the codename “Crossfire Hurricane,” the probe was established to examine “whether individual(s) associated with the Trump campaign are witting of and/or coordinating activities with the Government of Russia.”
No such evidence was revealed, and the Justice Department did not prosecute any Trump campaign officials for crimes involving alleged coordination with the Russian government or its allies in interference in the 2016 election.
The office of Special Counsel Mueller issued a report in March 2019, which concluded “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
When the investigation concluded, analysts from across the political divide, though most were non-establishment figures, derided the allegation of Trump’s collusion with Russians as a conspiracy theory.
Another investigation by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (IG) confirmed there was no evidence of collusion and uncovered “many basic and fundamental errors” and “extensive compliance failures” committed by the FBI during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
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Among the most serious were 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” with the information the Bureau submitted to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to electronically eavesdrop on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.
Another investigation by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (IG) confirmed there was no evidence of collusion and uncovered “many basic and fundamental errors” and “extensive compliance failures” committed by the FBI during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
Among the most serious were 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” with the information the Bureau submitted to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to electronically eavesdrop on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.
Page was the only Trump advisor known to have been put under FISA surveillance, which the IG report defined as “among the most sensitive and intrusive investigative techniques.” Page was not charged with wrongdoing on any matter, and the IG report stated “the FBI was unable to corroborate any of the specific substantive allegations against [Trump campaign advisor] Carter Page” provided in the Steele dossier.
The Steele dossier was produced by the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS, which had been hired in April 2016 by the political law firm Perkins Coie on behalf of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
In March 2022, the Federal Election Commission announced it was fining Clinton’s 2016 campaign as well as the Democratic National Committee for masking payments directed to a private intelligence firm through a renowned Democratic law firm.
Those payments to Fusion GPS funded the so-called Steele dossier, the report compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy, who turned to Russian intelligence spooks for dirt on Donald Trump’s campaign.
The FEC issued a ruling last week that found “probable cause” that both the Clinton campaign and the DNC violated federal election law by referring the opposition research project to “legal and compliance consulting” in campaign finance reports.
Overall, Clinton and the DNC paid more than $1 million to Fusion GPS for the dossier. Steele’s report, once it became public, was heralded by the liberal media and Democrats as proof that Trump was a pawn for the Kremlin.
The left relentlessly claimed that Trump was beholden to Russian interests who helped him cheat to defeat Clinton in 2016. Steele’s “intelligence” field years of never-ending assertions that Trump was an illegitimate president.
Then, the bottom fell out. It was revealed that the whole thing was concocted.
Last November, The Nation, one of the nation’s most left-wing publications, write a lengthy, detailed history of the dossier’s journey through the political system, and its use by the media, Democratic pols and the FBI to discredit Trump.
“While the media and political promotion of the Steele dossier was contemptible, its embrace by the FBI is an even bigger scandal. Rather than dismiss Steele’s work as a political hit job, the FBI used it as source material,” The Nation noted.
The Nation noted that when the FBI finally arrested Steele’s source, it turned out he was not even in Russia, but a Russian national who lived in Washington, D.C.
Recounting the madness it visited upon the left, The Nation remarked that the dossier actually helped Trump. As Steele’s “absurdities” and “inventions” fed “the fictitious Trump-Russia plot,” The Nation commented, the report also presented the 45th president with “the enduring gift of a conspiracy-crazed opposition” that would not relinquish its grip on the hoax no matter the strength of the evidence of Trump’s exoneration.
That was driven by the actions of Clinton and the DNC.
In a letter announcing its decision, the FEC notes that both the Clinton campaign and the DNC did not “concede” to the agency’s allegations that they violated federal law, but agreed to no longer contest the matter.
Accordingly, the Clinton campaign was fined $8,000 and the DNC $105,000. The FEC also consented to dropping pursuit of further allegations of wrongdoing by the heavy-hitting Democratic law firm that facilitated the scandal, Perkins Coie, as well as Fusion GPS or Christopher Steele.
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