Journalists from three news outlets have regained access to the White House after Donald Trump’s administration stripped them of their credentials in apparent violation of a federal judge’s court order that overturned the president’s media ban.
Reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were denied entry Thursday morning after U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly issued a temporary restraining order that requires the White House to immediately return reporters’ press passes.
Those reporters were allowed inside White House grounds around noon — just before the judge’s 12:30 p.m. deadline for the Trump administration to respond to an urgent request for an emergency court hearing.
Lawyers for the outlets told Judge Kelly that the White House has “already repeatedly violated” his order.
Moments before that 12:30 p.m. deadline, a White House official told the court that the press office began “reinstating” press badges at 7:25 a..m., and confiscated badges were dropped at the press entrance around 9:55 a.m.
In an order that arrived around 1 a.m., hours before a busy day in Washington, D.C., as the Trump administration welcomes Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Kelly rejected the government’s arguments that the president’s ban was motivated by national security concerns.
The ban appeared to be fueled by the president’s attempts to restrain negative press, according to Kelly.
“The record lacks factual support for defendants’ contention that the revocation of plaintiffs’ hard passes will in fact protect national security or that national security will be endangered if the court orders their passes reinstated while this litigation proceeds,” he wrote.
Laura Barrón-López, who covers the White House for MS NOW, told the network early Thursday morning that she showed her pass to Secret Service agents to get past a barricade and then entered a press area where she was denied entry.
But after scanning her pass and entering her PIN, the machine began flashing red, she said.
A Secret Service agent told her “it’s still being disabled,” she told the network. Her badge was then confiscated, she said.
She said it remains unclear whether the administration explicitly defied Kelly’s court order or whether there was a “lag” in the system.
CNN reporter Betsy Klein and a photojournalist were also denied entry, though one producer was able to enter the area by using their pass, the network reported.
The White House did not immediately return The Independent’s request for comment.
“Enough is enough,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “The administration was rightly given the back of the hand by Judge Kelly for claiming routine reports harm ‘national security,’ but court orders are just paper unless they’re enforced. Government officials who continue to deny journalists’ access to the White House in defiance of Kelly’s order should be held in contempt.”
Trump and the Department of Justice have accused the outlets of endangering national security by reporting sensitive and classified information that the president has also called “fake news” that is “negative, wrong and, in many cases, DANGEROUS for our Country.”
“Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” he wrote on Truth Social September 18. “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”
A federal lawsuit filed by lawyers representing the outlets accuses the Trump administration of “brazenly” violating their First Amendment rights and due process requirements under the Fifth Amendment by discriminating against them based solely on their editorial viewpoint.
“For one thing, nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns,” Kelly wrote in his order.
“Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced that he was ‘banning’ Plaintiffs from the White House — instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of Plaintiffs’ reporting,” the judge added.
The post-hoc justifications for banning the outlets — which the White House provided to reporters several days after Trump banned them — are still “ambiguous about the true purpose of the revocations,” according to Kelly.
“While Defendants’ letters to Plaintiffs mention national security concerns, they purport to identify reporting that ‘threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods,’ leaving open the possibility that all the stories fall into the later bucket, rather than the former,” he wrote.
The judge’s order is in effect for 14 days — and it can’t be immediately appealed while the legal challenge continues.
