Tough talk from CNN set a deadline for President Donald Trump’s administration — with threats — amid its ongoing ostracism.
Since September, when the feud with fake news found the chief executive booting CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, the administration has been making efforts to uphold its ban in the face of judicial involvement that has become a standard operating procedure for Trump’s detractors.
Now, as Air Force One is said to have remained off limits to the network, CNN issued a letter to the Department of Justice warning of further legal action if its place in pool coverage aboard the plane isn’t restored.
Writing to DOJ attorney Michael K. Velchik, the Associated Press detailed that CNN attorney Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. accused the White House of “what appears to be a new unstated policy to interfere with CNN’s ability to fulfill its duties.”
In the letter, Boutrous noted that CNN was barred from Air Force One in recent weeks when Trump traveled about the country, when the pool schedule placed responsibility on the network instead of ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox.
The attorney contended that before the September ban, CNN had had “uninterrupted access to the Oval Office and Air Force One for 45 years. That is because those spaces belong not to any particular 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.”
As was previously reported, following the initial ban, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly issued a temporary restraining order calling for network access to be restored over a lack of “constitutionally adequate due process.”
What followed was a White House decision to boot CNN from traveling with the president on multiple occasions, including his trip to the United Nations; a visit to Knoxville, Tennessee; stops in Florida and Georgia; as well as events in Oklahoma and Texas.
WH skirts judge’s order and boots CNN off traveling press pool https://t.co/TRszAUq21C via @BIZPACReview
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) October 1, 2026
At the same time, the letter claimed: “the White House has not even directly stated to CNN that it is being excluded from the Oval Office or Air Force One.”
As Boutrous requested the administration “confirm in writing” by 5 p.m. Thursday that the “White House abandon any policy of excluding CNN from the Oval Office and Air Force One,” the network’s attorney insisted “efforts to retaliate and discriminate against CNN based on the content of its news coverage are mistaken, counterproductive, and unlawful.”
“If these actions persist, CNN will have no choice but to return to the court to defend its rights, and it is prepared to fight as long as is necessary to secure them,” he assured.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department had taken its own steps toward accountability earlier in October as an antitrust investigation was opened over possible violations of the Sherman Act by the pool networks.
As was reported, the decision to suspend coverage in solidarity with the ban of CNN may have been a group boycott among commercial competitors when the law “prohibits conspiracies that unreasonably restrain trade” and bars “agreements among competitors to fix prices or wages, rig bids, or allocate customers, workers, or markets,” according to the DOJ.
TV networks stopped covering Trump — now his Justice Department is investigating whether they broke the law https://t.co/EYBSi8Xht1 via @BIZPACReview
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) October 12, 2026
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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