Lawsuit over White House media ban assigned to Trump nominee

The judge who will decide whether President Trump constitutionally banned a trio of media outlets from the White House is one of the president’s nominees — and he’s no stranger to Trump’s clashes with the press.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, whom Trump nominated to the federal bench in the nation’s capital during his first term, was selected to oversee the outlets’ legal challenge, according to a docket update.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed the lawsuit after Trump said the outlets were banned from the White House on Friday. Their reporters indicated over the weekend they were being denied access. The suit claims it’s a violation of the First Amendment and their due process rights.

It’s a familiar landscape for Kelly, who oversaw the trial proceedings when then-CNN reporter Jim Acosta sued the White House in 2018 after the first Trump administration revoked his “hard pass” used to access the complex.

Three days after it was filed, Kelly ruled Acosta’s due process rights were likely violated. The judge issued an order mandating officials temporarily restore his credential. Later, the White House announced new rules for reporters and dropped its effort to strip Acosta’s pass. CNN then voluntarily dropped its challenge.

The case came just more than a year into the job for Kelly, whom Trump nominated to a federal judgeship in 2017 a few months after taking the White House for the first time.

The judge is a graduate of Duke University and Georgetown University and worked as a federal prosecutor before joining Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) staff.

He also oversaw the seditious conspiracy trial of the Proud Boys, the far-right extremist group whose leaders stood trial over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Kelly handed down a 22-year prison sentence for Enrique Tarrio, the group’s former national chair, which marked the longest of any Jan. 6 defendant at the time.

Trump granted pardons and clemency to them after retaking office. As Kelly dismissed the remaining Proud Boys cases this past summer, he wrote that “no one should mistake” his decision as agreement with Trump’s decisions.

“As the Court has said many times, the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a perilous event,” Kelly wrote at the time.