North Dakotan leading effort to restore White House access to blocked journalists

North Dakota native Theodore “Ted” Boutrous Jr., who led a legal team to restore White House access for journalists recently banned by President Donald Trump, said the fight to preserve their ability to report will continue.  

Trump announced the ban on Sept. 18 of journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico. After their credentials were revoked, Boutrous assisted the outlets in suing the administration alleging violations of their First Amendment and due process rights. 

A federal judge restored the outlets’ access to the White House on Sept. 24 for a period of 14 days. 

On Sept. 28, the three outlets filed a motion to extend their White House access beyond Oct. 8, the expiration date of the initial ruling by federal judge Timothy J. Kelly. 

Boutrous told NDNC on Oct. 1 that a hearing is scheduled for Oct. 8 at 11 a.m. in Washington, D.C., that could determine future access for the outlets. 

“We had a really strong amicus brief showing the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, I think 79 news organizations joined, and then several other really strong briefs came in in support of us,” Boutrous said. “So I think we're really well positioned.”

After CNN was banned, the four other major networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News, refused to cover the president until CNN was reinstated in the press pool. 

The White House press pool is the group of journalists who cover the president during travel or when there are restrictions on numbers of journalists attending an event, then share it with media outlets in the U.S. and around the world. 

CNN was again blocked from traveling with the president to Knoxville, Tennessee, on Sept. 26, which meant no press pool coverage of Trump’s attendance at the Texas Longhorns vs. the Tennessee Volunteers game was available that day.  

Included in the preliminary injunction motion and brief is language about press access to Air Force One. 

“So we now have more evidence that they're excluding CNN. They're clearly doing it in retaliation for speech and news coverage they don't like. So it's viewpoint discrimination,” Boutrous said.

“Air Force One is a place, as you know, where President Trump treats it like a flying press briefing room. He takes questions, he answers questions, he engages with reporters. Reporters engage with him,” he said.

The initial restoration of White House access on Sept. 24 coincided with a high-level state visit from General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping that ended on Sept. 25, though press pool solidarity disrupted televised coverage on the first day of the visit. 

Press freedom in China has seriously deteriorated since Xi Jinping took over leadership in late 2012 after a period of several years before and after the 2008 Summer Olympics in which Chinese and foreign journalists based there had relatively more freedom to report. 

“It was really ironic,” Boutrous said of the timing of the ban. “He’s shooting himself in the foot, President Trump, by doing this press ban, and causing the pool to stand up and say, ‘No, we're not going to do that.’ It highlights how out of step this maneuver is with our system of government.” 

Boutrous, a lawyer at the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, grew up in Bismarck, attended Bismarck High School, and studied at the University of North Dakota as an undergraduate. He received his law degree from the University of San Diego School of Law in 1987. 

His interest in press freedom and access issues stems back to his days at UND, when he flirted with a career as a journalist or fiction writer. He was inspired by hearing some of the leading writers of his time at writers conferences UND held, he said. 

“I was thinking of fiction, journalism, and I think probably if I hadn't ended up being a lawyer, I probably would have gone down the journalism route,” Boutrous said. 

With his firm having a longstanding tradition of representing major news organizations, Boutrous felt a natural affinity for those in the media industry he represented. 

“I really just loved it, because journalists and lawyers have a lot in common,” he said. “You know that we're kind of both baked into the Constitution. You ask questions. You try to tell the truth.” 

Journalists, Boutrous said, are there as surrogates for the public and fight for people to get more information.

“What’s really unfortunate with President Trump issuing this ban is that it squelches information to the public,” he said. “Our democratic system is built on the idea that the people should get as much information as possible so they can decide how to run a democracy.” 

Amidst all the tussle over White House press access, Boutrous received sad news that his mother, Norma Boutrous, passed away at 100 years of age at Touchmark Senior Living Community in Bismarck on Sept. 23. 

“She had been doing so great, and she was 100, but we’re missing her,” Boutrous said. “It still hurts, even when they’re 100.” 

A funeral service for Norma will be held on Oct. 6 at St. George's Episcopal Memorial Church in Bismarck.