Trump administration to defend its ban of major news outlets in court

The news organisations are scheduled to make their case to a US district judge on Wednesday afternoon.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration has defended Trump’s decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House grounds, arguing in a court filing that the president has broad authority to determine which journalists can access the complex and that the outlets’s reporting raised national security concerns.

The dispute is set to go before a federal judge in Washington, DC, on Wednesday. The three news organisations sued the Trump administration on Monday to restore their access to the White House.

In a filing ahead of the hearing, Justice Department lawyers said the outlets had failed to meet what the administration described as standards of professionalism and decorum.

“Access to the White House is a privilege — not a right,” the filing said.

The White House press office sent letters to the three outlets on Tuesday alleging their coverage involved “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information”.

The letters, filed in court, cited CNN publishing “top-secret” construction details of a bunker beneath the White House’s East Wing, MS NOW coverage of the impact of the Iran war on US military munitions and a Politico report about funding for the White House ballroom that included details about Secret Service security improvements. It also cited Politico relying on anonymous sources for a report describing the Republican congressional midterm convention as a “disaster”.

The filing argues that publishing such information can divert national security personnel and resources as officials assess whether material is classified and determine its security implications.

The administration is also asking the court to overturn a 1977 appeals court ruling, Sherrill vs Knight, which held that White House press access could not be denied arbitrarily or without compelling reasons.

The lawsuit by the three outlets argues that the ban violates their First Amendment rights.

The proceedings are historic, said Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

“No president has taken this explicit of a step” to ban entire news outlets because he doesn’t like their reporting, she said. “There have been various presidents throughout history who have grumbled about the press or threatened to take more major steps, but really there was nothing at this level before Trump.”

The case was assigned to US District Judge Timothy Kelly, who previously ordered the restoration of CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s White House credentials during Trump’s first term. Despite Kelly being a Trump-appointed judge, the president has already expressed his disappointment in the selection.

“They have drawn a great Judge, for them, a man who ruled in favor of Jim Acosta, who now seems to have disappeared from the Planet. The Judge’s name is Tim Kelly, and he was, sadly, appointed by ‘TRUMP,’” the president wrote on Truth Social. “In other words, almost without question and, as usual, we’ll go for appeal because Fake News people and publications that only write negatively, and who violate our National Security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown ‘sources,’ shouldn’t be allowed access to the most important Office anywhere in the World.”

An amicus brief was filed by other news groups Wednesday, urging the court to immediately restore White House access to the three outlets. It said, “the targeted expulsion of news media from White House grounds injures the public interest” and that “unassailable First Amendment law makes any viewpoint-based decision to bar reporters from a nonpublic forum constitutionally repugnant”.

The news organisations are scheduled to make their case at 3:30pm local time (19:30 GMT).