Donald Trump’s administration argues that three media outlets that were blocked from the White House had plenty of notice of their imminent removal before the president announced he was unilaterally “banning” them.
Department of Justice attorney Michael Velchik told a federal judge on Thursday that CNN, one of three outlets targeted by the president along with MSNOW and Politico, “has been on notice for years.”
Trump has long led a crusade against CNN as a bastion of “fake news,” a term that should have served as a signal to the network to change its approach, Velchik suggested.
“Trump doesn’t mind negative press stories if he deserves them,” he said.
Lawyers for the outlets are asking U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly to restore their access to the White House and indefinitely block the Trump administration from stripping their credentials while a legal battle continues.
The Justice Department has argued that the outlets were banned for national security reasons, though the president has not made any such argument. The White House Press Office only raised those concerns in letters to the outlets — after they filed a lawsuit to reverse the ban.
Velchik argued that Trump has the right to target specific reporters and outlets at his “discretion.”
“It is within the discretion of the president to say, ‘I am concerned with a specific reporter,’” he said.
Theodore Boutrous, who is representing the outlets, told Kelly on Thursday that the administration mounted a “sham process” that amounts to an “egregious” infringement of the First Amendment and due process rights.
The outlets are seeking a preliminary injunction that would prevent the White House from threatening access while the legal challenge plays out.
Trump — as “the decision-maker” behind the ban — “made clear he was making a decision to ban [the outlets] in order to punish speech he didn't like because of its viewpoint,” Boutrous said.
“I doubt he even knows about these letters,” he said.
In letters to the outlets on September 22, several days after the initial ban, the White House Press Office accused the outlets of “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security” and “publishing sensitive or classified information.”
Each letter cited several offending stories, some of which were several months or more than a year old, that have “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods.”
They included stories in which administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, were the sources. The stories included reporting on the U.S. military, including depleting munitions during the Iran war, the Trump administration's responsibility for a missile strike on an Iranian girls’ school, and reduced troop presence in the Pacific and Europe.
At least two stories deal with Trump’s plans for a ballroom and military complex at the site of the now-demolished East Wing of the White House — information that the president and administration officials have detailed themselves in court filings.
Judge Kelly has already issued a temporary restraining order that rejected the government’s arguments that the president’s ban was motivated by national security concerns.
His order in the early morning hours of September 24 required the White House to immediately reinstate the outlets’ credentials and restore their access to the White House grounds, but it did not explicitly address their participation in pool coverage.
Impacted reporters were eventually allowed inside White House grounds around noon that day, but on September 25, CNN learned that it would not be permitted to travel aboard Air Force One as the designated television network pooler for the president’s trip to Knoxville, Tennessee.
The White House also blocked Politico from Air Force One on Monday.
In an interview with TIME published last week, Trump denied that he was violating the court order while White House communications director Steven Cheung argued that restoring press passes is “different than allowing the pool into the events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One.”
The White House told The Independent that traveling on Air Force One is a “privilege not a right” and defended Trump as “the most accessible President in American history” who “will continue to grant an unprecedented level of access to the press.”
Judge Kelly expects to issue a decision in the coming days.
His temporary restraining order is set to expire at midnight on Monday.
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