"In other words, as the President asserts, ‘[t]he Russia Collusion Hoax was dead, at least until Defendants [as members of the Pulitzer Prize board] attempted to resurrect it’ by conspiring to publish a defamatory statement falsely implying that the President colluded with the Russians."

In their motion to dismiss, the Board had asserted that their statement defending the awards was purely opinion and not actionable. Artau, however, points out that they injected claims of fact.

"The board members vouched for the truth of reporting that had been debunked by all credible sources charged with investigating the false claim that the President colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election," he wrote.

Artau states that President Trump met the burden of establishing jurisdiction for the trial court and can therefore "proceed with his asserted claims that the non-resident defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth." //

Trump's lawsuit countered that assertion, noting explicitly how the Washington Post had “retracted statements from several articles from 2017 relating to the Steele Dossier and other alleged connections between the Trump campaign and Russia.”

Indeed, the Post quietly edited two major articles that relied on the discredited Steele dossier and added editor’s notes to at least 14 other reports.