WASHINGTON – Journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were allowed to return to the White House on Thursday, nearly a week after President Donald Trump banned them. The restoration came after a judge ruled that the administration had to temporarily restore their access. White House reporters Betsy Klein of CNN and Laura Barrón-López of MS NOW immediately began reporting live on air after they were allowed onto the White House grounds Thursday afternoon. Both media outlets pointed to the on-air reports when asked for comment. Politico wrote shortly after that one of its reporters had also been granted access. The media won an overnight victory when U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly restored media access for 14 days while their legal challenge proceeded. However, as of Thursday morning, journalists from the banned media were still prohibited from entering the White House. Shortly afterward, Kelly ordered the administration to respond in writing by 12:30 p.m. after journalists from all three news outlets were turned away. After receiving Stopperich’s filing, the judge denied the news organizations’ request for an emergency hearing. It was unclear why journalists were initially barred from entering. The White House did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment. In the administration’s court filing shortly before the deadline, White House press operations director Micah Stopperich laid out a timeline of the administration’s activity to restore reporter access. Stopperich said his team was told shortly after 7 a.m. to restore access “to the affected reporters by turning on their physical credentials,” and shortly afterward they began doing so. The Secret Service indicated shortly after 9 a.m. that the journalists’ passes were “activated again” and they were left at the front door to be picked up within an hour. Trump announced his ban on the three media outlets in a post on Truth Social on Friday, saying it was “a result of their constant FAKE NEWS ‘reporting’! Kelly wrote in his temporary restraining order that Trump’s directive was likely unconstitutional. He wrote that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in their lawsuit against the administration, at least because their credentials were revoked last week without due process. Trump, the judge wrote, did not dispute that the outlets “received no notice or opportunity to be heard before their passes were revoked.” Boutrous said in a statement. Thursday’s order rejected the White House’s argument that the media ban was motivated by national security concerns, saying the administration offered little evidence to support the claim. “Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced he was ‘banning’ the plaintiffs from the White House; instead, he focused on the alleged untruthfulness and negativity of the plaintiffs’ reports,” Kelly wrote. White House Media Ban00:0000:00Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office shortly after publication, Trump referred to his directive as “the free press ban.” “I don’t want you in my office. I don’t want them here,” he said. He said the policy was not in response to a particular report, but because of “stories built up over the last few years.” “They write negative news on purpose. And they do it because they want to try to diminish Republicans and a Republican administration,” he said. “If they could straighten up, I would love it,” he added. The outlets said in their lawsuit challenging the ban that Trump’s comments show the policy was motivated by “retaliation” and “intended to intimidate” the media “into changing their reporting and threatening other journalists so they would not suffer the same fate.” House cited specific articles about munitions stockpiles impacted by the Iran war and sanctions against Russia, as well as one about a request for $1 billion in funding for East Wing renovations that the president had said would be funded entirely by donors, and another about negative “vibes” at the recent Republican midterm convention. Addressing the “extraordinary” standard that the administration said gave it the right to revoke media passes without notice, Kelly wrote that the types of stories cited in the letters “are routine” and go back months or even years. NBC News previously reported that Trump’s announcement on Friday caught several senior White House aides off guard. A senior White House official defended the change to NBC News earlier this week, saying, “No one close to the president was surprised by his action to hold the reporters accountable for fake news, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the White House Correspondents’ Association and a group of 49 news and media organizations, including NBCUniversal Media LLC, the company.” parent of NBC News, filed a legal brief in the case on Wednesday backing the three outlets “discriminatory” and “inconsistent with the First Amendment.” “The ban at issue in this case does exactly what long-standing D.C. Circuit precedent” has said the government cannot do, according to the document: “it barred three news organizations from access to the entire White House and its grounds because of the content of their reporting.” infringes their constitutionally protected interests, especially their interest in freedom of expression.’”
