Pulitzer notes: A message to Trump and Bezos; Julie K. Brown’s overdue win; and honors for Jill Lepore

Portrait of Jeff Bezos (cc) 2017 by thierry ehrmann.

By honoring The Washington Post with its most prestigious award, the Pulitzer Prize Board appeared intent on sending a message to two people: Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos.

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On Monday, the Post received the Public Service Award for its reporting on the chaos unleashed by Elon Musk and his DOGE assault on the federal government. One of the lead reporters in that effort was Hannah Natanson, the target of an extraordinary raid by the FBI last January.

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Drip, drip, drip: The indefatigable Julie Brown keeps breaking news about Trump and Epstein

Public domain Illustration of Jeffrey Epstein, left, and Donald Trump by Michael Gode.

The Jeffrey Epstein story is getting weirder, more disturbing and is moving ever closer to Donald Trump. The latest details come from Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald, who has done more to expose Epstein’s depravity than any other journalist.

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Brown’s latest comes in the form of two articles. The first, published on Friday, advances earlier reporting by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger and NPR that the Justice Department had withheld some of the Epstein files regarding a woman who told the FBI that Trump sexually assaulted her around 1983, when she was about 13 years old. Those files have now been produced. Brown writes that in one of the interviews:

She said he unzipped his pants and forced her head to his penis. She said she immediately bit him and Trump struck her, the report said. She told the FBI agents that she bit him because he “disgusted” her.

In a follow-up interview, she said that after she rebuffed him, he “pulled her hair and punched her on the side of the head.”

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