A federal judge ordered that President Donald Trump’s temporarily restore White House access for CNN, Politico, and MS Now.
Judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., who was appointed by Trump, called the ban unconstitutional and ordered the White House to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the journalists’s press credentials. The 14-day restraining order came down early Thursday morning.
Trump announced he was revoking White House press passes from the three outlets on Friday evening, saying he disagreed with their coverage and that access is a privilege. The outlets filed a suit challenging the move on First Amendment grounds.
In Kelly’s ruling, which came hours after an afternoon hearing, he noted that the news outlets had to show they are likely to succeed on the merits of their due process claim, and are likely to likely to suffer “irreparable harm” if there is not immediate relief.
“This is a high bar, but Plaintiffs have met it,” Kelly wrote in his ruling. The plaintiff’s argue that Trump’s order revoking the outlets’s press passes violated due process, which is the procedural standards the government must go through before revoking someone’s rights. Kelly wrote that the outlets did not receive “fair notice” of the government’s intention to revoke their access before doing so.
The judge also commented on the Trump administration’s claim that the outlet’s hard passes were revoked for national security issues.
“The Court is skeptical–at least on this record–that Defendants’ interests in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by, the revocation of Plaintiff’s hard passes,” he wrote. Kelly continued that in Trump’s comments about the ban, he focused on disagreeing with the coverage itself, instead of national security converns.
“And even the justifications provided to Plaintiffs after this case was filed are ambiguous about the true purpose of the revocations: while Defendants’ letters to Plaintiffs mention national security concerns, they purport to identify reporting that “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods,” leaving open the possibility that all the stories fall into the later bucket, rather than the former,” Kelly wrote.
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“This is a strong ruling vindicating freedom of the press, due process and the rule of law. We greatly appreciate the court’s swift action,” Theodore Boutrous, a lawyer representing the news outlets, said.
Trump was pessimistic about his odds to succeed with case being decided under Kelly, since he has ruled in against Trump in media cases before.
“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,’” Trump wrote Monday. “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. Why should I have to give ‘access’ to such people? Perhaps Judge Kelly could explain that!” Trump added.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
