CNN Warns Trump in White House: Restore Access to Air Force One or Face New Lawsuits

The White House has excluded CNN from President Donald Trump’s trips aboard Air Force One, disrupting a decades-old tradition of bundled television coverage.

Now, a CNN lawyer warns that the network will take additional legal action if the White House continues to prevent its news teams from covering the president.

“These efforts to retaliate and discriminate against CNN based on the content of its news coverage are wrong, counterproductive and unlawful,” Ted Boutrous, CNN’s outside counsel, wrote in a letter to the Justice Department on Monday.

The cease-and-desist letter stated that CNN “would be required to seek additional legal action” if the action continued.

The letter is the latest expansion of a legal battle that began when Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House a month ago.

The banned media outlets filed a lawsuit, alleging violations of the First and Fifth Amendments. A federal judge stepped in to restore access, first temporarily, then longer term, while the lawsuit over the ban continues.

U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly’s longer-term ruling issued a preliminary injunction in favor of the plaintiffs, saying Trump’s ban likely violated the First Amendment because it amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

Following the judge’s order, the Trump administration restored access to the White House for banned media outlets. But the Justice Department justified the ban in court, and the White House sought other ways to target journalists.

Preventing CNN from traveling on Air Force One is one of those ways. The administration appears to be relying on an ongoing lawsuit involving the Associated Press, which sued last year when Trump blocked AP journalists from Air Force One, the Oval Office and other areas with limited press pool space.

Trump took action against the AP because the news agency did not immediately begin using its new name for the Gulf of Mexico as he wanted.

In June 2025, an appeals court panel partially lifted the stay obtained by the AP and said the news wire was unlikely to succeed on its merits “because these restricted presidential spaces” like Air Force One and the Oval Office “are not First Amendment forums open to private speech and discussion.”

But the decision was “non-binding and unprecedented,” Boutrous emphasized in his letter, so it is not binding on other cases.

Boutrous also addressed the appeals panel’s decision in the AP case by showing that the Oval Office and Air Force One have become the primary locations “where the president interacts with the press by briefing reporters and answering questions.”

During the second Trump administration, the president answered more than 4,700 questions in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One and on the tarmac.

In contrast, he has answered about 150 questions in the White House press room since returning to office in January 2025.

So far this year, through September, Trump has appeared in the White House briefing room only four times, while he has held “43 press events in the Oval Office” and answered questions on and around Air Force One “51 times,” Boutrous wrote.

The AP is still awaiting the decision of the full court of appeal. In the meantime, some of its accesses have been restored.

The White House has not explicitly stated that it is following the AP’s plan in its actions against CNN. In fact, he provided “no written notification and provided no explanation” for excluding CNN from recent trips, Boutrous wrote in the letter.

The Justice Department did not respond Tuesday morning to a CNN reporter’s request for comment on the cease-and-desist letter.

But in a combative statement following the judge’s lengthy order last week, a White House official said “fake news has no place demanding a place in the President’s Oval Office.”

The five major television networks take turns providing joint television coverage of the president’s events and travels, and news agencies around the world rely on this footage for their own reports and broadcasts.

On several occasions, when CNN was next in the television pool rotation, the channel was excluded from the White House list, signaling that it was “prohibited from fully fulfilling its pool duties,” Boutrous wrote.

Most recently, this happened last weekend, when CNN was supposed to provide bundled coverage of the president’s trip to Georgia and Florida but was excluded from the out-of-town travel pool.

In a show of solidarity, the other major networks refused to step in when CNN was shut out.

The cease-and-desist letter noted that CNN has participated in the television pool and has covered presidents in the Oval Office and on Air Force One for 45 years.

“That’s because these spaces belong not to any one president or administration, but to all Americans, and CNN and other members of the press serve as surrogates for the public when covering the White House,” Boutrous wrote.

The cease-and-desist letter could foreshadow further legal filings in the ongoing lawsuit filed by CNN, MS NOW and Politico.

Boutrous wrote in Monday’s letter that CNN would like the administration to “confirm in writing” that “the White House abandons any policy of excluding CNN from the Oval Office and Air Force One” and stops preventing tasks assigned to the pool. He included a deadline of Thursday at 5 p.m. Eastern time.

“If these actions continue,” he wrote, “CNN will have no choice but to return to court to defend its rights, and it is prepared to fight as long as necessary to secure them.” »