Main: President Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, U.S. secretary of state, attend a press conference during the NATO Summit at the Presidential Complex in Ankara, Türkiye, on July 8, 2026 (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via AP). Left inset: U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly (Historical Society of the D.C. Circuit).
At a fast-moving hearing Wednesday afternoon in Washington, D.C., prominent First Amendment attorney Ted Boutrous defended CNN, MS NOW and Politico, criticizing the Justice Department’s repeated invocation of “national security” as though the phrase alone required President Donald Trump to prevail.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee whom the president called “totally disloyal” before the hearing, kept the proceeding under an hour. The session came only two days after the media organizations filed their lawsuit, which alleges violations of the First Amendment and Fifth Amendment due process protections.
At the outset, Kelly noted that Boutrous had appeared before him nearly eight years earlier and successfully argued for the restoration of then-CNN correspondent Jim Acosta’s press credentials.
Kelly said “it is fair to say that the processes that the [D.C. Circuit] court laid out in” the Acosta case—and in a similar case involving Playboy correspondent Brian Karem—“wasn’t followed here.”
Boutrous argued that the White House’s latest ban, imposed with “no notice, no process, and no warning,” should be rejected. He described the alleged “viewpoint discrimination” as “probably the clearest case in history.”
He reserved his strongest criticism for the DOJ’s “post hoc” national security arguments, which the department presented in a court filing late Tuesday night.
The filing, signed by DOJ attorney Michael Velchik, declared: “[a]fter all, access to the White House is a privilege—not a right.”
The Justice Department also argued that the D.C. Circuit’s ruling in Sherrill v. Knight was “wrong and should be overruled.” It said Trump has “‘compelling interest[s]’ in enforcing minimum standards for bona fide journalists and safeguarding national security information.”
Boutrous characterized the filing as another example of the Trump administration invoking “national security” to turn the tables in litigation.
He argued that the national security claims were intended to divert attention from what he called “clear” and unconstitutional retaliation.
“The first mention of national security in this case came from President Trump after we announced Monday morning we were going to be filing this lawsuit, and suddenly I guess the light bulb went off, and they all decided to start talking about national security,” Boutrous said sharply.
“Here they’re just saying national security. They’re using national security as this Taoism, these magic words, and whatever happens, it’s national security. But that doesn’t work,” he continued. “There’s no specifics. There are no stories identified by the president himself that would justify this. He disclaimed that. So this is just a pretextual, post hoc effort to justify just a blatant violation of due process.”
Boutrous also expressed concern about what might happen next, repeatedly pointing to Trump’s attempted abrupt removal of Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve board.
“I’m very concerned that even if the court grants a TRO [temporary restraining order] on due process grounds, the shenanigans will continue. And I think of the Trump versus Cook decision from the Supreme Court about how judges—courts don’t have to have naiveté that ordinary citizens wouldn’t. We can kind of see where we’re headed here,” Boutrous said.
Representing the DOJ, Velchik repeated that “access to the White House is a privilege—not a right.” He maintained that the president had “set out notice of his determination that he personally made” and had “identified with particularity a non-exhaustive list of reporting incidents.”
“It provided a process for plaintiffs to contest these particular incidents; they have until 5 p.m. Friday,” Velchik said.
In his rebuttal, Boutrous rejected that characterization, arguing that the procedure did not amount to meaningful due process. He again cited Cook v. Trump.
“Now they’re saying, ‘Well, Friday at 5 p.m. Maybe we’ll get a fair shot.’ I think we all know. Again, that’s Cook versus Trump. None of us are that naive. If they’re going to keep playing games or keep moving the ball, that’s not due process,” he said.
The hearing concluded without a ruling. Kelly said he would “try to get you an answer as soon as I can.”
The post ‘I guess the light bulb went off’: CNN lawyer mocks Trump DOJ’s ‘post hoc’ use of ‘magic words’ to get whatever the president wants first appeared on Law & Crime.
