White House tells Acosta his press pass will be suspended again when order expires, CNN says

Authored by washingtonpost.com and submitted by atomicspace
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White House officials have reportedly sent a letter to CNN’s Jim Acosta indicating that they will suspend his press pass again once the temporary restraining order that required them to restore Acosta’s credentials expires, CNN reported late Sunday. The 14-day order was issued Friday, and unless the judge extends it, it would expire at the end of the month.

The action was telegraphed Friday by press secretary Sarah Sanders, who said that the White House would only “temporarily reinstate” Acosta’s credentials in response to a court decision in his favor. Appearing on Fox News with her father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R), who was substituting for Sean Hannity, she later said that “we’ve laid out in a letter to CNN and their team what we think were some of the missteps that their reporter made at the press conference on November 7th.”

In a ruling seen as a victory for press freedom, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, appointed by President Trump, ordered the White House to temporarily restore Acosta’s press pass Friday while he considers the merits of the case and the possibility of a permanent order.

He said the White House has an obligation to afford due process to Acosta before it can revoke or suspend his access, and found that the White House’s decision-making process in this case was “so shrouded in mystery that the government could not tell me . . . who made the decision.”

But on Sunday night, CNN’s Brian Stelter of “Reliable Sources” said in his newsletter that “White House officials sent Acosta a letter stating that his pass is set to be suspended again once the restraining order expires.”

Stelter did not report the text of the letter or say whether it was the same letter the White House sent to Acosta on Friday. It was unclear whether the White House provided reasons that would somehow pass for due process in the eyes of the judge or provide a chance for Acosta to respond. The parties are expected to file status reports Monday explaining how they would like to proceed.

Trump said Friday that “we’re setting up a certain standard, which is what the court is requesting,” but no particular new rules have been publicly issued. On that day, after the court’s order was issued, Sanders said the White House would “develop rules and processes to ensure fair and orderly press conferences in the future. There must be decorum at the White House.”

“The White House is continuing to violate the First and 5th Amendments of the Constitution,” CNN said in a statement. “These actions threaten all journalists and news organizations. Jim Acosta and CNN will continue to report the news about the White House and the President.”

CNN and Acosta, the network’s chief White House correspondent, sued the White House and Sanders last week after they suspended his press credentials following Acosta’s minor altercation with a White House intern, who tried to take a microphone out of his hands as he questioned the president.

Sanders accused Acosta of “placing his hands on a young woman” when explaining why Acosta’s pass had been suspended, but Kelly found that this allegation was “likely untrue.”

In defending the White House’s decision to suspend Acosta’s press pass, Justice Department lawyers argued that it was not an infringement on the First Amendment because CNN had plenty of other White House reporters who are “more than capable of covering the White House complex on CNN’s behalf,” and Acosta could still “practice his profession and report on the White House” — just not at the White House.

Kelly agreed that access to the White House grounds is not a First Amendment right. But he also found that a reporter’s “First Amendment liberty interest in a White House press pass” is also protected by the Fifth Amendment’s due-process guarantees, as The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple previously reported. In other words, the White House can’t just revoke a reporter’s press pass for no good reason.

In deciding whether barring Acosta amounted to “irreparable harm,” a standard for granting temporary restraining orders, Kelly pointed to the case of journalist Robert Sherrill, who fought the White House’s denial of his press pass in 1977 and also won the right to due process and a restoration of his pass (though he never actually reapplied for it).

“The First Amendment interests as recognized in Sherrill were not vested merely in publications or agencies; they were liberties of the individual journalists themselves,” Kelly said, as excerpted by Wemple. “For that reason, that CNN may still send another journalist or journalists to the White House does not make the harm to Mr. Acosta any less irreparable. . . . It’s a harm that cannot be remedied in retrospect. . . . So on this highly, highly unusual set of facts and interests at stake, I do find that the plaintiffs have met their burden of establishing that irreparable harm has and will continue to occur in the absence of [remedy].”

Ted Boutrous, an attorney for CNN and Acosta, told Stelter on “Reliable Sources” that in the absence of reaching an agreement with the White House, they plan to seek a preliminary injunction blocking the White House from suspending Acosta’s credentials for a much longer period of time as the case moves forward.

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TheIllustriousWe on November 19th, 2018 at 12:55 UTC »

So the White House has apparently learned nothing from this stunt, which I guess comes as no surprise.

They still have not produced an objective set of standards for when and how they decide it’s necessary to revoke a reporter’s press pass (no, sending Acosta a letter at this stage “what we think were some of the missteps that their reporter made” does not suffice).

they still have not afforded Acosta an opportunity to appeal their decision

because they haven’t offered opportunity to appeal, they also have not communicated why such an appeal would be denied, who made the final call on the denial, or for what specific reasons.

In other words, the White House has done nothing here except announce that they plan to violate Acosta’s right to due process again in two weeks. If they double down on this stunt, they will lose for the same reason they lose lost in the first place. Sheer idiocy.

Egorse on November 19th, 2018 at 10:45 UTC »

From another wash post article

As he finished his presentation, Kelly emphasized what he hadn’t decided — namely, whether there was a content-based First Amendment issue at hand: “I have not determined that the First Amendment was violated here. I have not determined what legal standard would apply to the First Amendment claim here.” A statement from Sanders seized on this omission: “Today, the court made clear that there is no absolute First Amendment right to access the White House. In response to the court, we will temporarily reinstate the reporter’s hard pass. We will also further develop rules and processes to ensure fair and orderly press conferences in the future. There must be decorum at the White House.”

How the hell did sanders go from the judge not making a determination about the first amendment to interpreting his words to say ‘the court made clear’ about the first amendment? She’s a worse liar then the president.

Acidporisu on November 19th, 2018 at 09:32 UTC »

petty little shits