Judge Presses DOJ on Why Trump Banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico From the White House

A federal judge on Thursday sharply questioned the Justice Department's explanation for President Trump's decision to bar reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, saying the government's arguments in court appear to differ from what the president has said in public.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly is weighing whether to grant the three news outlets longer-term relief after he issued an order last month that temporarily blocked the bans and required the White House to reinstate the reporters' access to the complex. That temporary restraining order was set to expire Thursday, but Kelly said it will remain in place through Tuesday. He said he will rule on the outlets' request for a preliminary injunction no later than that day, which means reporters for all three organizations will keep their access into early next week.

Ted Boutrous, the lawyer arguing for the news organizations, urged Kelly to bar the White House from taking away access while the case moves forward. The ban affects 78 credentialed journalists across the three outlets, he said. Boutrous argued that Mr. Trump has made "nasty" comments about the press for years and has made plain that the ban was a reaction to reporting he dislikes. It appears the president "got up on the wrong side of the bed" and declared a ban on the three organizations, Boutrous said.

Michael Velchik, senior counsel in the Justice Department's Civil Division, told the court that the president concluded the reporters failed to meet minimum professional journalistic standards and published articles that put national security at risk.

Kelly, whom Mr. Trump appointed, was not persuaded. The president "seems to have said publicly and on several occasions" that he was acting "because of X and Y, and now the government is coming to court saying no, it was actually Z," the judge said. That fact pattern, he said, "is a hard one to find," and it will be an "uphill climb" for the government to point to cases where a decision-maker said on the record he was acting for one reason and then offered a different one in court.

The judge pressed the point directly. Is it a violation of minimum journalistic standards to "portray the administration in a negative light?" he asked Velchik. He also asked the Justice Department lawyer to identify the "strongest" piece of evidence in the record showing that the government's real motive was to protect national security and that the ban actually accomplishes that goal.

Kelly said the biggest obstacle for the government is probably due process. He said the news outlets are likely to succeed in arguing they were denied it, because their journalists were given no prior notice that their reporting could cost them their White House access and no chance to respond before they were banned. He pointed to a 2020 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit holding that the White House must give a journalist fair notice that a credential may be suspended for unprofessional conduct and spell out meaningful standards before punishing that reporter. The judge also said the articles the White House cited as justification were "routine" and, in some cases, months old.

The reporters were allowed back after the earlier order, and had their credentials returned nearly 12 hours after Kelly issued it. But the White House has still refused to let CNN and Politico into the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One, spaces that are opened to a rotating pool of journalists who cover the president each day.

Mr. Trump announced the bans in a post on Truth Social last month, saying they were based on the outlets' "constant 'reporting' FAKE NEWS!" He warned that "other Fake News Media Outlets" could face the same treatment. CBS News and CNN are both part of Skydance, the parent company formed after the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery that was finalized this week.