In the latest election twist, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is among the current list of people nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and a person who saw the nomination letter reportedly said a member of Congress proposed Trump’s name to the nomination committee.
Proposing Nobel nominations isn’t among the prescribed duties of Congress members, but members of Congress can present names to the Nobel nomination committee in Norway at the committee’s request.Forbes said that Nobel Prize watcher Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of Oslo’s Peace Research Institute, saw the nomination letter and said it came from “an American male senator or congressman.”
According to the committee’s nomination guidelines, “members of national assemblies and governments of states” can submit Peace Prize nominations, along with professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology, and former Prize winners.
Harpviken wouldn’t name the person who nominated Trump, but he did say he received a copy of the official letter.
It is also unlikely the Nobel committee would disclose the nominator’s name. In its public guidance about the prize process, the committee says it keeps the names of nominators private for 50 years. The rules also preclude a self-nomination from a potential award winner.
The Nobel Peace prize nomination committee receives about 200 names each year for the Peace Prize by February 1, and it quickly moves to pull together a short list of possible winners, to be announced in October.
Harpviken says the candidates he believes are on the Nobel committee’s short list included Edward Snowden, and the negotiators of the Iran Nuclear Deal, including U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. He has also mention John Kerry as a possible award winner in connection with the Iran Nuclear Deal.
Other confirmed names of likely nominees this year, Harpviken says, are actress Susan Sarandon, Pope Francis, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Three United States presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama, have received the prize while in office, but not during election years. Jimmy Carter received the prize after leaving the White House.
Other Americans who have received the Peace Prize include Frank B. Kellogg, Jane Addams, Linus Pauling, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Al Gore.
