Lawyers for President Donald Trump have asked a Florida court to discard calls from the Pulitzer Prize Board to delay Trump’s defamation lawsuit against them over concerns that the ongoing legal action could interfere with his constitutional duties. 

Earlier this year, the board sought a protective order that would keep confidential discovery materials related to President-elect Donald Trump's libel suit against the panel for its 2018 prize awards to New York Times and Washington Post staffs for their coverage of the Trump-Russia collusion narratives. 

Trump sued the board in 2022 for defamation after it refused to retract the prizes. The board previously conducted a review of the prizes and stood by the awards. Neither news outlet is a defendant in the suit.

"Defendants again seek to wrongfully prevent President Trump, for the fourth time, from obtaining discovery and proceeding with this case by improperly asserting Presidential immunity against him as plaintiff,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the filing last week. “That request is unlawful, and has no basis in the U.S. Constitution or the law of Florida.” 

In a January filing, the Pulitzer Board defendants argued, citing Trump’s own legal team arguing in other cases against the President elsewhere, “‘Because the Supremacy Clause [of the Constitution] makes federal law the supreme Law of the Land,’ and because Plaintiff again ‘has principal responsibility to ensure that those laws are faithfully executed,’ it would now raise constitutional concerns for this court—or any other state court—to exercise ‘direct control’ over plaintiff during his presidency.” 

Trump’s lawyers argue that the board has no standing to attempt to invoke presidential immunity on the president’s behalf. They also assert that Article II of the Constitution only protects the president from being a defendant in a state lawsuit, not a plaintiff. 

This latest motions are part of the Pulitzer Board’s attempt to prevent Trump from uncovering award deliberations in discovery. In early January, the Board submitted a filing in Okeechobee County, asking for a protective order to keep discovery materials confidential and addressed possible complaints from the Trump team.