Ted Boutrous, the attorney representing the three media outlets that were banned from the White House by President Donald Trump, said his team is ready to go to the Supreme Court after the administration announced it would appeal an order blocking the government from enforcing that ban.

“We’re going to keep fighting,” he told Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday’s “Deadline: White House.”

On Tuesday, Judge Timothy Kelly sided with MS NOW, CNN and Politico and barred the White House from banning journalists from those organizations while the lawsuit plays out. The preliminary injunction replaces a temporary restraining order Kelly granted last month. It is not a final ruling on the merits of the case.

In his written opinion, Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, found that the president’s ban, first enacted on Sept. 19, likely violated both the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause and the First Amendment.

When Wallace asked Boutrous if it was “more satisfying” that such a decisive order came from a judge appointed by the president, he said he tries not to “think about Trump and Obama and Biden judges” but admitted it “does make you have faith in the rule of law that it shouldn’t matter.

“Judge Kelly just applied the law,” he said. “He said the law is clear in the D.C. Circuit. The First Amendment law is clear … So I think it adds to the faith that people can have in the system when you have a judge rule against someone who appointed them.”

Following Kelly’s decision late Tuesday, the White House said it intended to appeal the ruling. In a statement to MS NOW, a spokesperson said, “The Fake News has no place demanding a spot in the President’s Oval Office. The lies they smear are a disservice to the American public and tear at the very fabric of our Democracy. They’re completely capable of reporting from directly outside.”

The Justice Department declined to comment on the ruling.

Trump announced the ban on journalists from MS NOW, CNN and Politico on social media on Sept. 18 and said the action was a “result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” However, after the outlets filed a lawsuit on Sept. 21, the White House said the ban was due to national security concerns.

Kelly rejected that argument, writing in his order there was “no evidence in the record that President Trump made the decision to revoke Plaintiffs’ hard passes on national security grounds from the get-go, nor at any time has he directly stated that national security was the reason for his decision.”

Boutrous said the administration has repeatedly tried to excuse its crackdown on free speech by invoking national security concerns, citing a similar argument from the Pentagon when it tried to limit reporters from accessing that building.

“They seem to have a button, a ‘national security’ button, and they just think if they press it, courts are going to say, ‘We can’t go there,’” Boutrous told Wallace. “And the courts are saying, ‘No, we will defer to the president and the executive branch, but we’re not naive.’”

Boutrous predicted the case will end up in front of the Supreme Court, noting that the administration has frequently relied on the Republican-appointed majority and its “shadow docket” to bypass lower courts and secure rapid victories.

“I’m hoping the Supreme Court will, at some point, lose patience and say we’re not going to hear every one of your complaints about our Constitution and just say enough,” Boutrous said. “But I don’t put it past them to try in any case. So we’re ready, we’re going to keep fighting.”

“I think the beauty of our system is the fight itself serves a valuable purpose,” he told Wallace, “not only getting reporters back in there to report the news, but also to say, ‘We’re going to fight for these rights for the American people.’”

The post ‘We’re going to keep fighting’: Lawyer for outlets banned by White House braces for Trump’s next move appeared first on MS NOW.

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