Trump media ban ruling could come soon, judge says at court hearing

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., heard arguments on Wednesday on President Donald Trump‘s controversial ban of three media outlets from the White House.

Judge Timothy Kelly ended the hearing without immediately ruling on a request by the outlets — MS NOW, CNN, Politico — to block Trump from continuing to bar them from the White House.

“I’ll consider what you told me today. I’ll try and get you an answer as soon as I can,” Kelly told a lawyer for the outlets and a Justice Department attorney who defended the ban during the teleconference hearing that lasted about 46 minutes.

The outlets, in a lawsuit against Trump, argue the ban violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects free press rights by punishing them for the content of stories they have published about Trump and his administration.

“This is a clear retaliation case,” Theodore Boutrous Jr., a lawyer representing the outlets, argued at Wednesday’s hearing to Kelly, whom Trump nominated for his seat in U.S. District Court in D.C. in 2018.

The Justice Department, in a late Tuesday night filing, said Trump had barred the outlets on the grounds of national security concerns, and that the president had the legal right to do so. Trump did not cite that rationale when he announced the ban last Friday.

Kelly, at the beginning of the hearing, noted a 1977 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had found that media outlets were entitled to due process in any decision affecting an outlet’s holding of so-called hard passes to the White House.

The three media outlets were not warned before Trump’s announcement that he was considering yanking their hard pass access.

“I think it is fair to say that process … wasn’t followed here, talking about predeprivation process,” Kelly said.

The judge noted that the Justice Department, in defending Trump’s ban, argued that the 1977 ruling was wrong.

“There wasn’t a semblance of due process here,” said Boutrous. “This came completely out of the blue.”

The attorney said Trump’s public statements about the ban back up the outlets’ argument that they are being targeted with “viewpoint discrimination” over how they cover the president and his administration.

Boutrous said that in Truth Social posts and in the Oval Office, Trump has said that he implemented the ban because “the coverage is too negative” and “purposely negative.”

“He keeps saying the same thing,” Boutrous said. “He keeps proving our point. He’s literally our lead witness here.”

Addressing the Justice Department’s argument that the ban is justified on national security grounds, Boutrous said, “They’re literally arguing that reporters shouldn’t scrutinize national security.”

The First Amendment protects the media’s right to cover that subject, because “journalists can and should hold the government accountable,” the…