Trump one step closer to questioning Pulitzer Prize board members under oath as judge won’t dismiss defamation suit over praise of Russia probe reporting

 Former President Donald Trump appears at RNC in Milwaukee on July 15, 2024.

Center: Former President Donald Trump appears at RNC in Milwaukee on July 15, 2024 (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images).

An Okeechobee County, Florida, judge on Saturday rejected the joint effort of Pulitzer Prize board members to throw out Donald Trump’s defamation conspiracy lawsuit, finding that a 2022 statement standing by New York Times and Washington Post reporting on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe was “actionable mixed opinion” and that the former president’s claims were “properly pled.”

The upshot of the ruling, as the New York Times noted in its own report about the Senior 19th Judicial Circuit Judge Robert Pegg’s ruling, is that Trump is one step closer to discovery and a possible deposition grillings of the board members under oath.

The judge has ordered “[a]ll defendants […] to file an answer” to Trump’s amended complaint within 30 days. The motion to dismiss effort was led by Poynter Institute for Media Studies President Neil Brown, the lone Floridian, and was joined by 19 others, including The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum, New York Times opinion columnist Carlos Lozada, former Los Angeles Times executive editor Kevin Merida, and the New Yorker’s David Remnick.

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