Share and Follow
President Donald Trump gestures while speaking with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Monday, April 6, 2026, in Washington (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson).
An ongoing clash has erupted between Donald Trump and members of the Pulitzer Prize Board, with the former president now disclosing who will be facing his scrutiny behind closed doors next.
According to court documents assessed by Law&Crime, two notifications were made public on Thursday in the Florida state court. These documents reveal that Kathleen Carroll, a former executive editor at the Associated Press, and Kevin Merida, a former executive editor at the Los Angeles Times and a current board member, are scheduled for video depositions on April 15 and April 21, respectively.
While Carroll is not a named defendant, her prior role as a board member and former co-chair makes her a subject of interest. At this time, the specifics of her questioning remain unclear. Law&Crime has reached out to a Trump attorney for comments regarding the notice concerning Carroll.
Trump is actively gathering evidence to support his claim that the Pulitzer board neglected its esteemed standards by failing to revoke several 2018 awards. These awards were given to the Washington Post and New York Times for their coverage of the Mueller investigation, Michael Flynn, the Steele Dossier, former FBI director James Comey, Donald Trump Jr., a 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer, and Russian troll operations.
The recent notices come on the heels of several other depositions and Trump’s recent demand for documents from Pulitzer board member and New Yorker editor David Remnick. Trump seeks Remnick’s “communications” with the co-founders of Fusion GPS, the organization behind the Steele dossier. The court filing references an August 2016 meeting between Remnick, Glenn Simpson, and Peter Fritsch, requesting details of the discussion and subsequent events over the next six years. Among various articles by Jane Mayer, the New Yorker published a 2019 interview where the co-founders defended their investigative work.
A separate but failed Trump lawsuit explained Trump’s interest in this area, alleging Fusion GPS and his then-opponent Hillary Clinton conspired in a racketeering scheme to cook up a “fraudulent ‘dossier’” that would harm his campaign, his business interests, and cast a cloud over his first term.
The board has made waves of its own in discovery with requests for Trump’s tax returns, records on “medical and/or psychological health” and “any prescription medications,” and for a “complete and unredacted copy” of Mueller’s report, putting to the test Trump’s claims that a “defamatory” board statement backing Russia probe reporting awards harmed his reputation.
Just as Mueller’s former law firm recently opposed a Trump executive order as retaliation for its employment and views of the former special counsel, the board has argued that it took the president’s claims seriously, investigated them, and had the articles independently reviewed — only to be punished with a lawsuit for declining to rewrite history.
After the board resisted the president’s look into its “internal deliberations and review” and lost a long-shot bid to halt the lawsuit in its entirety until he’s out of office, Trump forced Stephen J. Adler, the “independent reviewer” the board relied on, to sit for a deposition. Semafor identified Adler as the reviewer in January.
In 2022, the board released the statement Trump claimed was defamatory, rebuffing his demands to rescind the awards. The statement cited “two independent reviews” of the Times and Post’s reporting — Adler’s conclusions that the prizes “stand,” as “no” aspects of the award-winning articles were “discredited.”
Once his investigation concluded, Mueller famously testified before Congress that Trump was not “exculpated” even though the former special counsel did not allege a grand conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia or obstruction offenses. Trump submits that makes the Russia probe a “Collusion Hoax” and its boosters defamers, even as the special counsel’s report identified “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.”