President Donald Trump's White House is facing a court deadline in its fight with three major news outlets — and their lawyers say the administration still has no new evidence that their reporting ever threatened national security.
Lawyers for CNN, MS NOW and Politico said in a court filing late Monday that the White House had offered no new evidence to support its repeated claims that the outlets' reporting endangered national security. The filing is their final written effort to convince federal Judge Timothy Kelly to indefinitely maintain their journalists' White House access.
"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 reads.
The filing also cites Trump's own explanation: "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.'"
The White House's position, argued by Department of Justice lawyers, is that the three outlets were barred because their reporting "jeopardized national security and spread falsehoods." Trump announced the ban in September, pointing to what he called unfair and negative coverage.
Judge Kelly — appointed by Trump himself — has already signaled skepticism. In late September he granted the outlets a 14-day temporary restraining order restoring their credentials, writing that he was "skeptical — at least on this record — that Defendants' interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by, the revocation of Plaintiffs' hard passes." He noted the administration offered no evidence showing how the cited articles compromised national security — and that the reporters who wrote the specific stories the government targeted did not even hold White House hard passes.
Kelly will hold a hearing Thursday on the outlets' request for a preliminary injunction. If granted, it would protect their access for a longer stretch while the case plays out. The current temporary order expires October 8 — so the clock is ticking on both sides.