CNN warned the Justice Department on Monday that the network may pursue additional legal action if the Trump administration continues to ban the network’s journalists from traveling with the president aboard Air Force One.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico are locked in a legal battle to restore their access to the White House after President Donald Trump banned the outlets on Sept. 18. The new legal threat comes a week after a federal judge extended the preliminary injunction blocking the administration from barring the outlets’ reporters from White House grounds while the lawsuit proceeds.
The Trump administration has continued to restrict CNN’s access to Air Force One, which is the official call sign for any U.S. Air Force aircraft carrying the president. The outlet contends that blocking CNN from traveling with the president greatly affects the network’s ability to fulfill its duties as the rotating representative of the White House television pool — a group of TV networks that have an agreement to share information and resources while covering the president each day.
In a letter sent to the Justice Department, CNN attorney Theodore Boutrous demanded written confirmation by 5 p.m. Thursday that the Trump administration will cease all restrictions on CNN access to the Oval Office and Air Force One.
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“If these actions persist, CNN will have no choice but to return to the court to defend its rights, and it is prepared to fight as long as is necessary to secure them,” Boutrous wrote in the letter dated Monday.
CNN has been denied access to the aircraft at least four times, Boutrous said, including during Trump’s trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 21 and as recently as Friday, when the network learned it would be excluded from traveling with the president to Georgia and Florida. The White House has not provided the network with any written notice or explanation for the denials, the letter said.
Politico, which is also represented by Boutrous, has also been denied access to Air Force One at least one time, preventing the outlet from serving as the primary print pooler on Oct. 5.
Boutrous argued that the Trump administration is continuing to “retaliate and discriminate against CNN based on the content of its news coverage,” but the White House has repeatedly pushed back on the notion that news outlets have an absolute right to access.
“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,” a White House official wrote in a statement to The Washington Sun. “When publications lie, fabricate, and ignore the truth, proximity matters less and they can write their fiction from outside of these secure facilities.”
The Justice Department declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.
CNN’s letter says that traveling on Air Force One has become an essential part of covering Trump because he often hosts impromptu press gaggles while aboard the aircraft and on the tarmac.
“Through September of this year, the President has appeared in the White House Briefing Room only 4 times and taken approximately 96 questions there. During the same time period, he has held 43 press events in the Oval Office where he fielded at least 741 questions. Aboard Air Force One and on the tarmac, President Trump has made himself available to the press 51 times and fielded no fewer than 865 questions,” Boutrous wrote.
CNN has argued in court and in the letter that restrictions on the network’s ability to cover Trump have profound effects on the American public’s access to the president because CNN is part of a broader pool agreement between five television networks.
“CNN has invested significant financial and other resources to ensure the highest quality television pool coverage of the President, whether he is in the White House or traveling across the country or overseas — pool coverage that reaches millions of Americans as well as viewers across the globe,” Boutrous wrote. “Preventing CNN from performing its full White House Television Pool duties deprives the American public of a vital source of information about the President and his activities.”
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