Hours after the US Justice Department dropped its prosecution of former National Security Advisor Gen. (retd), Michael Flynn, over the Russian investigation, US President Donald Trump on Thursday slammed newspapers which had won the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the alleged Russia collusion in US Presidential elections of 2016.
Trump said that now that the story has been proved untrue, these newspapers who had reported on the Russian investigation and had won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the same should return the highest award in journalism.
"Pulitzer prizes should all be returned because you know what, they were given out falsely. It was fake news, they are all fake news. Those Pulitzer prizes should be given back immediately and the Pulitzer committee, or whoever gives the prizes, they are a disgrace unless they give those prizes back because they got Pulitzer prizes for what turned out to be false stories," Trump said at the Oval Office in the White House.
"They are not journalists. They are thieves," the US President further said, "...You saw it today, more documents came out saying there was absolutely no collusion with Russia."
He further called his former NSA, Flynn, a 'great gentleman' and accused former US President Barack Obama and his administration of targetting the former.
"He (Flynn) is a great gentleman, he was targeted by the Obama administration and he was targeted in order to try and take down a president, and what they have done is a disgrace and I hope a big price is going to be paid, a big price should be paid. There has never been anything like this in the history of our country," Trump said.
"What they did, what the Obama administration did is unprecedented. It has never happened, never happened. A thing like this has never happened before in the history of our country and I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price because they are dishonest, crooked people. They are scum and I say it a lot, they are scum, they are human scum. This should never have happened in this country," the US President said.
Noting that he is very happy for Flynn, Trump said that he is a great warrior.
"Now, in my book, he is an even greater warrior. What happened to him should never happen again and what happened to this presidency to go through all of that and still do more than any president has ever done in the first three years is pretty amazing," he said.
For context, Flynn was suspected to be a national threat by the US law enforcement who investigated him. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents about his connection with a Russian diplomat in 2017. A plea agreement was reached between Flynn and special counsel Robert Mueller`s office as Flynn vowed to cooperate in the probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential polls.
(With PTI inputs)
