CNN Flat-Out Accuses Trump Admin of Lying About Restoring Their WH Access in Jaw-Dropping Report: ‘That Is Not True’

CNN accused President Donald Trump’s administration of lying in a sworn declaration it submitted to the court Thursday regarding the timeline it claimed for when their press pass access to the White House had been restored.

On Sept. 18, Trump wrote a Truth Social post saying he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, citing his usual claims of “Fake News” and threatening that other outlets would soon be banned too.

Numerous journalists, commentators, and free-speech advocacy groups denounced Trump’s efforts to ban these media outlets as unconstitutional.

On Monday, the television networks in the White House TV press pool banded together to effectively boycott pool coverage of the president and the banned outlets filed a lawsuit challenging the ban on First Amendment grounds. Trump reacted furiously to the lawsuit, as well as complaining about the judge, who previously ruled against him when he revoked then-CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta’s press pass. Judge Timothy Kelly was nominated by Trump himself to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2017.

After a contentious hearing in which Kelly openly expressed skepticism about the administration’s arguments, the judge issued an order in the early hours of Thursday morning directing the White House to restore the press passes. Nonetheless, the outlets were still denied entry for several hours Thursday and filed a motion for an emergency hearing before finally being allowed in.

The White House filed a sworn declaration from Micah Stopperich, the Director of White House Press Operations, making claims about the timeline of the restoration of the press passes.

The White House’s story is not accurate, according to the affected media outlets. CNN anchor Dana Bash covered the dispute on Inside Politics Thursday afternoon, with senior justice correspondent Evan Perez ripping the administration’s claim apart.

Perez noted that the White House was claiming they had “complied” with Kelly’s order in Stopperich’s declaration, and ran through the timeline.

“Of course, we know that that is not true, because [CNN senior reporter] Betsy Klein was there after 11 am,” said Perez. “She had tried 6 am. She had tried a couple of other times this morning. And then at 11 am, she was still being denied access. We just saw that she was finally allowed in, during earlier this hour.”

It did mean that the judge’s 14-day temporary restraining order was “in force,” Perez continued, and “the White House appears to be complying with this part of the order, which is that to restore access to the reporters.”

Bash asked Perez to circle back to how the declaration said the revoked badges “would be back in place and ready to use at 9:30 am,” as the White House had claimed, “because that didn’t happen.”

“Right? It did not happen,” Perez agreed. “This is a sworn declaration from the head of White House Operations. And they say that the press team dropped the badges off at the entry gate at 9:55 am, and that the Secret Service said everybody had access at that hour. And again, as we pointed out, Betsy Klein and MS NOW reporters went there and they were still being denied. So that did not happen for another hour after the White House claims that they were already being provided access.”

Reached for comment, a representative for CNN pointed Mediaite to the live blog on the network’s website, which said that Stopperich’s declaration setting the time for the press pass restoration as “around 9:55 am” as a claim that “appears to contradict the on-the-ground experience of journalists.”

“As late as 11 a.m. ET, CNN and MS NOW journalists were denied entry, however, contradicting the White House’s declaration,” CNN reported. “All three outlets have now been allowed in, as of 12:29 p.m ET.”

Mediaite reached out to MS NOW and Politico for comment but did not receive a reply from at the time of publication. MS NOW later flagged a clip from their White House reporter Laura Barrón-López and her reporting from the White House after access was restored.

Transcript provided by MS NOW:

PETER ALEXANDER, MS NOW ANCHOR: This is a special hour of State of Play. I’m Peter Alexander. We’re going to stick with it. Some MS NOW journalists are just now regaining access to the White House. Happening as we have been speaking, right now. My colleague Laura Barrón-López, who we spoke to within the last five minutes outside the gates is now on site. Laura, if you hear me, I want to get to you right away for the latest and what your experience has been.

LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ, MS NOW WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yeah, I hear you, Peter. So I was just allowed back into the White House through the Northwest Gate. I had to go through that outside perimeter that you saw me referencing so many times earlier this morning, showed my ID. They said that I was in the system. I came to the northwest gate. That there you see me when they first cleared me through that outer perimeter, and then I arrived at the northwest gate, showed my government ID again, and was returned my badge. I have it now with me. That was confiscated earlier this morning, and I was just immediately came straight to the camera to inform everyone that we have been restored. I have been restored my access, and I believe that others on our team are being restored their access as well as I speak. And so this is the North Lawn, right on Pebble Beach, that we’ve been talking about a lot as well, where so many foreign heads of state come through here, as well as different administration officials, and we often, at the end of the lawn closer to the West Wing, we often will talk to them, and they will come and speak to the press at what’s called the sticks, and so now, hopefully, throughout the day, if any administration officials come to speak about the ongoing state visit by the Chinese President Xi Jinping, we will be able to be there and to ask the necessary questions.

ALEXANDER: Laura, stay with me. First of all, good news. I’m glad you’re inside. I’m glad the process has played out. It’s not clear how deliberate this was, or if very likely it’s possible that this was a lag in the computer system, but it was a significant lag that took more than 12 hours after this ruling for you to be allowed back in. There is now a separate issue to be addressed, which is the issue of the pool, because the president is holding events today where the pool, those five network outlets, take turns as representatives, not of their own outlet, but of the press body at large, of the outlets and others around the world with whom they share information. Whether they are going to be entering the events that happened today, I believe today was ABC’s day to serve as the pool. ABC is in the room, or I should say is in the building, but as part of this shared decision, they were not agreeing to carry it unless CNN was allowed back in the pool for events when its turn came as well. Is there any update on whether that has been resolved?

BARRÓN-LÓPEZ: No, I believe that as of right now, the last I checked before being allowed to come back into the White House was that there was no update on whether or not CNN was going to be able to be in the pool, in their place in the pool. And of course, as you laid out, they have made clear that unless CNN is restored that additional access to the pool, then the outlets are going to move in solidarity, meaning that they will not be participating in pool coverage of the president. And so again, that would be a continued media stoppage on covering the president in those intimate settings when he is making key movements, when he is holding these key meetings, and getting that direct footage of the president. And as you know, Peter, earlier this week when this all started taking effect, the president did not have the pool with him. They were not there when he was announcing the opening and the finishing of his helipad on the south lawn of the White House, and you couldn’t hear the audio from the president in those images because, again, there is a lot of resources and technical expertise that goes into bringing all of these minute by minute, day by day updates on the movements of the president of the United States.

ALEXANDER: Laura Barrón-Lopez. There on what we call Pebble Beach. Those who have worked there, those who have taken a tour, you know what I’m talking about. Beneath those green tents, where we do our live shots. Laura, just say with me what I was struck by is while you were speaking, we saw a lot of the cameras, including Andy Harnik. He is a member of the White House Correspondents’ Association, represents the Associated Press, shooting their cameras, taking photos the other direction, shooting toward the left where the entrance is, because now all of a sudden the First Amendment and journalists have become the story. When our job, as we know, on any normal day is to go the other direction and talk to the principals, the White House officials there. This is really just a nutty day that we’re witnessing. Thank you for your reporting.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

This article has been updated with additional information.

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