A federal judge late Tuesday night indefinitely blocked the White House from enforcing a ban on three media companies that President Donald Trump announced in mid-September.
The preliminary injunction by Judge Timothy Kelly expands an existing injunction against President Trump’s ban on MS NOW, CNN, and Politico from the White House complex.
“President Trump’s own comments suggest that he intended to revoke the plaintiffs’ hard pass in order to change the reporting about him,” wrote Kelly, who was nominated by President Trump to a seat on the U.S. District Court in Washington.
Kelly said in a written opinion that the three news organizations’ claims in a pending lawsuit challenging the ban are likely to succeed. The lawsuit alleges that Trump was denied due process by immediately banning it without giving him a chance to respond to the action.
The judge said the news organization is also likely to prevail on two First Amendment claims in its civil lawsuit alleging retaliation and viewpoint discrimination.
Kelly dismissed the Justice Department’s claims that President Trump decided to revoke media access to the White House on national security grounds.
“There is no evidence in the record that President Trump made the decision to revoke Plaintiffs’ hard passes on national security grounds in the first place, nor has he ever directly stated that national security was the reason for his decision,” Kelly wrote.
The judge said the Justice Department’s “national security” argument appeared to be “merely an after-the-fact rationalization of the decision” after news companies filed suit.
“Yet, no one should interpret the court’s decision to suggest that President Trump’s concerns about the accuracy and fairness of media reporting are unfounded or that the government is powerless when its true purpose is to protect national security when classified information is unlawfully disclosed,” Kelly wrote.
“Nevertheless, for reasons explained below, the court will extend the relief it has already ordered, and the status quo will continue while this litigation proceeds,” Kelly said, referring to an earlier order restoring media access to the White House.
The judge said that without a preliminary injunction, the retailer “is likely to suffer irreparable harm.”
His ruling came on the heels of a court hearing last Thursday in which the Justice Department defended the ban.
President Trump said last month that he would appeal any decision to block Kelly’s ban. CNBC has reached out to the White House and Department of Justice for comment.
“We are grateful that the court ruled in our clients’ favor,” Theodore Boutras, a lawyer for both media outlets, said in a statement.
“When the president issued the ‘free press ban,’ he clearly and unequivocally violated due process and the First Amendment,” Bootles said. “Since then, the president has repeatedly, candidly, and consistently acknowledged in public that he banned clients from the White House to punish reporting he didn’t like and to force journalists to cover stories he preferred.”
“The harm this ban has done to our clients, the First Amendment, and the nation as a whole is profound,” the attorneys said. “The court was right to restrain the White House from enforcing this ‘unconstitutional press freedom ban’ for the time being.”
President Trump said on September 18 that he would ban three news organizations because of how they covered him.
In a post on Truth Social the same day, Trump wrote that news organizations “should not be able to constantly write and report fiction and lies when reporting on the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America.”
President Trump said on the same day that he was “tired” of the “cumulative coverage” by the news media.
The ban went into effect the next day, September 19, when journalists were denied access to the White House grounds and had their permanent passes confiscated by Secret Service agents.
On September 21, the outlet filed a civil suit against Trump, alleging that “this ban is a more direct attack on the First Amendment and a more blatant violation of the Constitution’s most fundamental principles.”
Two days later, Kelly filed a restraining order temporarily revoking the ban for at least 14 days. Journalists from the three news organizations were allowed back into the White House on Sept. 24, and Mr. Kelly has since extended the restraining order to give him time to consider whether to issue a preliminary injunction on Tuesday, with no expiration date set.
