CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO have accused the Trump administration of continuing to exclude their journalists from presidential events and Air Force One despite court orders restoring their White House press credentials.
The news organizations alleged that the White House has prevented them from performing scheduled press pool assignments as part of continued retaliation for coverage President Donald Trump considers unfavorable, according to an amended complaint filed Oct. 28.
The court order restored media credentials on Sept. 24 and granted a preliminary injunction Oct. 13.
The White House responded with a statement emailed Wednesday to The Epoch Times.
“No person and no journalist has a constitutional right to access to the President’s Oval Office, Air Force One, or other sensitive and private facilities,” the statement read. “When publications lie, fabricate, and ignore the truth, proximity matters less and they can write their fiction from outside of these secure facilities.”
CNN said it was denied access to Air Force One on all six occasions it was scheduled to serve as the designated television network press pool representative since Trump announced the ban on Sept. 18. Those assignments included presidential trips on Sept. 21 and 26 and Oct. 1, 16, 21, and 26.
The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, also alleged that POLITICO was excluded from scheduled print pool assignments for Trump’s Oct. 5 trip to Nebraska and an Oct. 26 trip to Mississippi.
MS NOW has received no secondary television pool assignments since the ban, despite previously serving in that role roughly every two to three weeks, according to the filing.
Hours after the news organizations filed their original lawsuit on Sept. 21, Trump said the Oval Office should not be “defiled by Third Rate Clowns” and vowed to “do whatever is necessary,” according to the amended complaint.
“Every news organization now faces the risk of similar punishment for coverage the President deems insufficiently favorable, and the public is deprived of current and complete information about its government,” the amended complaint stated.
The amended complaint stated that Trump has held 121 press events aboard Air Force One or on the tarmac and 138 in the Oval Office since he started his second term. It stated the president took at least 4,700 questions from reporters, “creating ongoing, extensive opportunities for journalists to interact with officials, conduct newsgathering, and publish reporting from those spaces.”
Trump has said that he was not targeting press freedom, but the media has not treated him fairly, and the “fake news” publications only write negatively.
“The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control,” the president said in a post on Truth Social on Sept. 21.
In February, the Trump administration posted a video clip of then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reciting the administration’s accomplishments she said certain members of the press corps had not asked about.
Leavitt spoke about the stock market rising, crime rates going down, a legal victory on immigration, and rents declining.
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