CNN’s lawyers have put the Trump administration on the clock over the network’s missing seat aboard Air Force One.
Gibson Dunn partner Theodore “Ted” Boutrous Jr., who serves as the network’s outside counsel, addressed a demand letter to the Justice Department on Monday, Oct. 19, 2026. It gave the administration until 5 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, Oct. 22, to confirm in writing that it was abandoning any policy that keeps CNN out of the Oval Office and off President Donald Trump’s plane.
Without that confirmation, the network says it will go back to federal court. Boutrous told the department that CNN is prepared to litigate the question for as long as it takes.
“These efforts to retaliate and discriminate against CNN based on the content of its news coverage are mistaken, counterproductive, and unlawful,” Boutrous wrote to Michael Velchik, the Justice Department senior counsel representing the Trump administration.
No Primary Pooler on the Plane
A rotation of five television networks covers the president from aboard Air Force One, and CNN keeps getting skipped. The lineup includes ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC, and the other four are evaluating requests case by case while declining to send substitute crews into CNN’s slot.
According to the letter, the White House has denied CNN a spot on the plane at least four times, with no advance notice and no explanation. The network was blocked from Trump’s trip to Knoxville, Tenn., on Sept. 26, and most recently from his trip to Georgia and Florida, where CNN was scheduled to serve as television pool lead. With other major networks declining to step into the slot, presidential travel has gone out on some days with no primary television pooler.
Trump is traveling the country to campaign for Republican candidates ahead of the November midterms. He stepped off Air Force One at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kan., on Oct. 19, and landed early the next day at Joint Base Andrews, Md.
The Briefing Room Trump Barely Visits
Boutrous argued that the Oval Office and Air Force One have overtaken the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room as the principal places where the president briefs reporters and answers questions. Since January 2025, Trump has fielded more than 4,700 questions in the Oval Office, aboard the plane and on the tarmac, according to data CNN compiled for the letter. The briefing room over the same span accounted for roughly 150.
Trump appeared in the briefing room four times during the first nine months of 2026. The Oval Office hosted 43 of his press events over that same period, and he took questions on 51 occasions aboard or alongside Air Force One. Of the nearly 5,000 questions across the three venues, 97 percent came in the Oval Office or were connected to Air Force One travel.
The White House’s rotating television press pool added CNN in 1981, he wrote, and the network has had uninterrupted access to the Oval Office and the plane ever since. Those spaces belong to all Americans rather than to any administration, he argued, with reporters serving as surrogates for the public.
Barred From the Grounds, Then Back
Trump barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House grounds on Sept. 18, citing his unhappiness with their reporting. National security was part of the reason for the ban, the Justice Department later said.
A suit from the three outlets alleged violations of the First and Fifth Amendments. U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly responded with a preliminary injunction that barred the White House from pulling the hard passes of their reporters and other personnel, finding that the blanket ban likely amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and that it also violated the outlets’ due process rights. The administration is appealing.
A White House official said in a statement following Kelly’s order that “the Fake News has no place demanding a spot in the President’s Oval Office.”
The outlets have their access to the White House complex back. The seats on the plane have not followed.
Politico is facing flight restrictions of its own, with correspondents barred from fulfilling assigned print pool duties earlier in October. The White House also sent the outlet a letter threatening it over its coverage of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and also blocked a reporter from serving in the pool covering the president.
“When publications lie, fabricate, and ignore the truth, proximity matters less, and they can write their fiction from outside of these secure facilities,” the White House told the Daily Beast. The administration’s position has been that no person and no journalist holds a constitutional right of access to the Oval Office, Air Force One or other sensitive and private facilities.
The Fight the AP Started
Left unsettled by Kelly’s ruling was whether the White House may shut news outlets out of tighter spaces such as the Oval Office and Air Force One. The Associated Press raised that question in a case it filed in 2025, after the White House blocked its reporters from the plane, the Oval Office and other limited-space pool areas over the wire service’s refusal to adopt “Gulf of America” in its style guidance.
Finding viewpoint discrimination, a federal judge directed the White House to give the AP its access back wherever other media are invited. Much of that order was stayed by an appellate panel in June 2025, which concluded that the administration was likely to prevail on its claim that restricted presidential spaces are not First Amendment forums opened for private speech. The panel said the White House keeps discretion over which journalists are admitted, viewpoint included.
Boutrous called the panel’s order non-binding and non-precedential. The AP has some of its access back and is still awaiting a decision from the full appeals court.
The 5 p.m. deadline on Thursday, Oct. 22, passed with no public sign that the White House planned to honor Boutrous’ demand. A day earlier, on Wednesday, Oct. 21, the White House again left CNN off the TV pool for Trump’s trip to South Carolina, CNN’s Brian Stelter reported, leaving the trip without pooled TV coverage. The administration’s appeal of Kelly’s injunction remains unresolved.
