A federal judge said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his team have flouted his order striking down a set of Pentagon press access guidelines by trying to impose a new series of restrictions.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled last month that Hegseth’s press policy, which went into effect last year, violated the First and Fifth amendments.
But The New York Times, which challenged the policy, quickly returned to court after Hegseth’s team revised that policy with even tighter access to the complex. Among other things, the Pentagon announced that the Correspondents’ Corridor, the journalist workspaces, would be closed, with plans to move reporters to an annex outside the building. Moreover, all journalists would require an escort when they entered the building, and access would be limited to events like press conferences.
In his latest ruling, the judge wrote that he “has no choice but to conclude that the Department’s abrupt closure of the Correspondents’ Corridor and its ban on credentialed journalists traveling unescorted through the Pentagon are not security measures or efforts to make good on prior commitments but rather transparent attempts to negate the impact of this Court’s Order.”
The judge also found fault with the Pentagon’s attempt to revise an earlier policy that restricted journalists from soliciting information, classified or unclassified, that was not approved for release.
The new prohibition is on “encouraging, inducing, or requesting” the disclosure of non-public or unauthorized information. Friedman wrote that the revision was still unconstitutionally vague.
Friedman also noted “what this case is really about: the attempt by the Secretary of Defense to dictate the information received by the American people, to control the message so that the public hears and sees only what the Secretary and the Trump Administration want them to hear and see. The Constitution demands better. The American public demands better, too.”
The judge added, “The curtailment of First Amendment rights is dangerous at any time, even more so in a time of war. Suppression of political speech is the mark of an autocracy, not a democracy — as the framers recognized when they drafted the First Amendment.”
When the Pentagon introduced the new policy last year, it required journalists to sign on to them, or lose their credentials. The Times and an array of outlets, including the major broadcast and cable networks, as well as entities including NPR and Newsmax, refused to sign. That led to an exodus of journalists from the Pentagon complex.
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If the unqualified fake tough guy thinks this court was tough, wait until he has to stand trial for war crimes.
Can’t wait till this traitor and the entire anti American administration are in jail!