Three news organizations whose access to the White House was restored, for now, after President Donald Trump revoked it are now asking a federal judge to also restore access to other areas where the president regularly engages with the press, including the Oval Office and Air Force One.

The new request from the previously banned news outlets — MS NOW, CNN and Politico — comes a week after the organizations amended their original lawsuit to seek access to White House areas limited to the press pool, a group of media companies that share responsibility for routinely covering the president.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly indefinitely reversed Trump’s ban on White House access and ordered the Trump administration to return credentials and access to all affected journalists. Since that ruling, however, the White House has continued to bar reporters from those three outlets from participating in the press pool, which guarantees coverage of the president at all times.

Kelly will likely set a briefing schedule for the Trump administration to respond to this new request and could hold a hearing on it in the coming weeks.

“Twice, this Court has held that Defendants may not punish Plaintiffs for their journalism by revoking their hard passes and excluding them from the White House grounds entirely,” lawyers for MS NOW, CNN and Politico wrote in the new filing. “Defendants have responded by excluding Plaintiffs from those areas where the President most often engages with the press. These exclusions violate the Constitution.”

The news organizations have asked Kelly to block the Trump administration from discriminating against the previously banned outlets in their respective pool rotations and to stop interfering with their access to the Oval Office and Air Force One, which they had before the ban went into effect on Sept. 18.

The White House press pool was formed as part of a long-standing agreement between the White House and news organizations in which a small group of journalists agrees to cover the president —- often traveling with him —- on behalf of the entire press corps.

Lawyers for MS NOW, CNN and Politico have argued that the Trump administration’s restrictions surrounding the pool violate both the First Amendment and the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

“These exclusions reflect an unstated policy to carry out the President’s directive to take his viewpoint-discriminatory and retaliatory ban ‘as far as you can,’” they wrote in the amended lawsuit last week.

They have alleged that the president has explicitly said he wants to limit Oval Office access to the news organizations that he believes cover him unfavorably, pointing specifically to a White House statement that said the banned news organizations have “no place demanding a spot in the president’s Oval Office.

A White House official told MS NOW, “No person may demand access to the Oval Office.”

The Department of Justice declined to comment.

The post MS NOW, CNN and Politico ask judge to restore pool access, including to Oval Office and Air Force One appeared first on MS NOW.

Author: Source Author

From MS Now.