The White House was left scrambling to return press badges after a federal judge blocked Donald Trump’s media ban.
The Trump administration eventually followed the judge’s order and allowed banned reporters back on White House grounds on Thursday afternoon, but not before it had completely botched its response Thursday morning.
Judge Timothy Kelly had ordered the White House to immediately reinstate the hard passes from CNN, MS NOW and Politico overnight after the president banned them from the White House last week.
When journalists showed up for work on Thursday morning after the order came down, they found their passes were still deactivated, and Secret Service agents at security continued to confiscate them.
The news organizations sounded the alarm that the administration appeared to defy a federal court order and demanded an emergency hearing.
But in its response, the government said the problem was incompetence in following the order, not an active effort to defy it.
In a sworn response to the court Thursday afternoon, Micah Stopperich, director of White House Press Operations, described an administration left scrambling hours after the order came down.
She said White House Operations was notified at 7:10 am ET to restore access to the banned reporters and began restoring passes at 7:25 am ET, well after some reporters showed up at the White House, as they typically do, ahead of the morning network newscasts.
The Secret Service indicated the badges were back on as of 9:07 am ET and that officials were working to locate the confiscated badges.
The White House press team delivered the badges to the entry gate for journalists to pick up at 9:55 am ET.
Their botched response meant Trump’s elaborate welcome ceremony for Chinese President Xi Jinping was not broadcast across any of the major networks Thursday.
The major TV networks had banded together in protest of Trump’s ban and have not been carrying out TV pool duties in response to Trump’s attempt to ban some outlets.
The scramble came after Kelly issued his order just before 1 am ET overnight.
He ordered the administration to immediately reinstate the hard passes for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico that were revoked, and he also said the organizations would likely succeed in their case.
