A POLITICO reporter was denied access to the White House Thursday and his press credentials confiscated after a judge orderedthe Trump administration overnight to immediately restore access for news organizations that President Donald Trump banned from the complex last week.
MS NOW and CNN said their reporters were also denied entry. The three outlets have been barred from the White House since Saturday, following an order from Trump to do so "as a result of their constant 'reporting' FAKE NEWS!"
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted a temporary restraining order early Thursday morning mandating that the administration restore the organizations’ access for at least two weeks while further litigation plays out.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ted Boutrous Jr., the lead lawyer for the three outlets, alerted the judge in a filing Thursday morning that reporters from the outlets had been turned away and asked Kelly to hold "an immediate hearing" on the administration's "non-compliance" with Kelly's ruling. The judge ordered the Trump administration to respond to the allegation by 12:30 p.m. Eastern.
A Secret Service agent told the POLITICO reporter who had his “hard pass” confiscated Thursday morning that he was not cleared to enter but might be able to with a temporary day pass. The temporary passes are granted to journalists who do not hold what are known as “hard passes,” which grant permanent access to press facilities at the White House.
The reporter explained the court had ordered that POLITICO reporters be allowed to return to the White House and that he should be cleared to enter. The Secret Service agent replied that there was nothing he could do.
A spokesperson for POLITICO referred back to the outlet’s reporting on the judge’s decision.
CNN reported that some of its staff who arrived Thursday were denied access multiple times — including a CNN photojournalist and another reporter whose credentials were also taken away on Saturday, Betsy Klein. A CNN producer was able to use their pass to enter White House grounds, the outlet reported.
MS NOW White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López reported on air Thursday morning that she was similarly denied entry and had her badge confiscated. A Secret Service agent told her it was “still being disabled.”
Spokespeople for CNN and MS NOW referred back to their on-air reporting.
This latest denial in access comes as the White House prepares for a state visit Thursday from Chinese leader Xi Jinping — a long-planned meeting that includes multiple events on White House grounds largely open to the broader press corps, including a military review and a North Portico greeting. Other events, including remarks by the two leaders and a silent drill platoon review, are only accessible for a smaller group of White House reporters, known as the press pool.
In its court arguments against restoring access to the three outlets that have been barred from the White House grounds, the Justice Department urged that the ban be retained at least until Xi’s visit concludes for national security reasons.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs, meanwhile, argued that the Xi visit was a newsworthy event that warranted restoration of credentials as soon as possible.
The five major television networks have declined to participate in their regular pool duties since the president’s announcement, including the president’s recent trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. ABC was listed as the TV pool in the White House’s “daily guidance” email sent to reporters Wednesday night — the first time the document has included one of the five networks since Friday — though it was not immediately clear whether the network planned to broadcast video of the president’s events.
ABC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other news organizations have declined to disseminate or publish their photos in solidarity with the three outlets.
While temporary restraining orders cannot typically be appealed, the Trump administration has done so recently. Trump promised to appeal the court decision, should Kelly, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, rule against him.
Kelly, in his order, suggested that the White House’s argument that the revocation of credentials was on national security grounds amounted to a justification after the fact, since the president previously said he took that action because he disagreed with the outlets’ reporting.
“Nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns. 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,” Kelly wrote.
He also said that the White House had violated the journalists’ due process rights by taking away their access without giving them advance notice that concerns about their reporting could result in such a revocation. A Justice Department lawyer argued during a Wednesday hearing that the administration could bar reporters for failing to follow “widely known” journalism standards, an argument Kelly wrote was “so vague it hardly does the trick.”
Gregory Svirnovskiy contributed to this report.
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