In a dramatic escalation of a long-running legal battle, US President Donald Trump may be compelled by a court to disclose his psychiatric and broader medical records as part of discovery in a lawsuit he himself filed.
Trump filed the action in December 2022 against the Pulitzer Prize Board and 19 of its current and former members, alleging defamation arising from the board's public defence of its 2018 National Reporting awards. Court filings now show that the defendants have formally sought Trump's medical, psychological, tax and financial records as part of discovery, placing the former president in an unusual legal position of having to justify the withholding of deeply personal information. The case is proceeding in the Circuit Court of the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit in and for Okeechobee County, Florida, under standard civil litigation rules governing document production and privilege.
