MSNBC's David Gura defends the Pulitzer-winning reporting of The Washington Post and The New York Times

After Attorney General William Barr's letter to Congress, in which he laid out a brief summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's multi-year investigation into whether the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russian election interference in 2016, said that Mueller found no evidence of collusion, the White House has considered the results a major political and legal victory.

And now President Trump and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. both want The Washington Post and The New York Times stripped of their Pulitzer Prizes that the news outlets won for reporting on national security matters — including on possible collusion with Moscow.

Of course, they do, in fact, award Pulitzer Prizes for fiction. But there is already pushback on the idea the reporting done by the Post and the Times was unduly or prematurely given the award now that Barr's letter seems to indicate there is no hard evidence tying any other majors White House sphere to crimes.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

MSNBC's David Gura explained, by reading the Pulitzer's own citation, that the papers did not actually win the award directly for their reporting on collusion. Instead, the reporting was more broadly focused on Russian election interference, though there were stories about the Trump campaign's connections to Moscow. Gura pointed out, among other things, how the reporting informed the public about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in 2016 that eventually led to his sentencing. Watch the clip below. Tim O'Donnell