Lawyers for CNN, MS NOW and Politico said Monday that the White House has offered no new evidence to support its repeated claims that the outlets’ reporting has endangered national security.
The argument, in a court filing late Monday, is the companies’ final written effort to persuade U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly to keep White House access in place for their journalists after President Donald Trump revoked their credentials last month.
“At every turn since, Defendants have sought to justify the President’s ‘ban on the free press’ with a series of shifting rationales, lurching from unarticulated standards of professionalism to nebulous and pretextual concerns about protecting national security,” the filing says.
“But all the while, the President himself has continued telling anyone who will listen precisely what this ban is really about, most recently complaining at length in an interview with Time magazine that he banned Plaintiffs because he feels that he should not ‘be forced to bear’ what he considers ‘constantly bad stories.’”
In late September, Trump said he was barring the three outlets from covering him at the White House because of their “negative stories.” CNN, MS NOW and Politico sued and won temporary access.
In his initial ruling, Kelly said the White House must follow five decades of Washington court precedent that bars officials from revoking journalists’ press access without notice and a chance to respond.
The lawyers asked the judge to let them show why any further access limits the administration might impose would violate the Constitution.
They wrote that the White House has “persisted in unpredictably targeting Plaintiffs,” including by barring CNN and Politico from Air Force One in recent days.
“The Oval Office and Air Force One are this administration’s go-to forum for press briefings,” the lawyers wrote. “The President may not use Air Force One as a flying press briefing room and then claim standardless discretion to exclude news organizations based on the content of their reporting or their perceived editorial viewpoint.”