By Jan Wolfe and Jack Queen
WASHINGTON, Sept 23 (Reuters) – News outlets CNN, MS NOW and Politico will ask a federal judge on Wednesday to immediately restore their access to the White House after President Donald Trump banned them in one of his most dramatic clashes with the media to date.
The outlets said the ban, which Trump announced on Friday on his social media platform Truth Social, is an illegal attack on their right to free speech under the US Constitution and violates their rights to due process.
The three news organizations, he said, “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States.”
In a legal filing on the eve of the hearing, the Trump administration argued that access to the White House was a privilege, not an entitlement, and so the president had the authority to suspend the organisations’ access.
Trump has accused the media of trying to hurt Republicans ahead of the November midterm elections, as his sagging popularity threatens the party’s chances of retaining control in both houses of Congress.
“This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the outlets said in their lawsuit, filed on Monday.
In a show of solidarity, major US television networks on Monday suspended their pooled coverage of Trump’s movements, upending a decades-long system that allows Americans to see their president’s public movements on TV.
With the press pool absent, Trump’s remarks on Monday were inaudible during the White House’s live stream of a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new helipad.
At a 3:30 p.m. (1930 GMT) hearing in Washington, US District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, will consider a request to immediately reinstate the outlets’ access to the White House while the litigation unfolds.
Trump’s effort to ban the three news organizations from the White House is on shaky legal ground, according to free speech experts, who said US courts have long held that the government cannot condition press access on favorable coverage once it has opened a space to the media.
In a 2018 case that raised similar legal issues, Kelly ordered the White House to restore CNN correspondent Jim Acosta’s press pass, which had been revoked after a contentious news conference with Trump.
Kelly ruled in that case that the White House had not used fair and clear procedures to revoke Acosta’s credential, calling the process “shrouded in mystery.”
In a social media post on Monday afternoon, Trump indicated regret over appointing Kelly to the bench in 2017, during his first term, and said he was bracing for a loss.
Although past presidents have battled with the press, Trump’s campaign against the media has been unprecedented. He has upended decades of tradition by denying basic access to many major news organizations, launching personal attacks on journalists for their reporting, and elevating media outlets seen as more sympathetic to the administration. He also has filed lawsuits against multiple news outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the BBC.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Jack Queen; Editing by Tom Hals, Noeleen Walder and Edmund Klamann)
