CNN should refile its lawsuit against the White House, with one exclusion: CNN’s present claim that the U.S. Secret Service has breached its First Amendment rights. As Washington Examiner White House reporter, Robert Donachie, notes, the Secret Service now finds itself caught between the White House and CNN.
CNN has listed the Secret Service as a guilty party in relation to the White House’s revocation last week of CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta’s White House complex hard pass. Yet while CNN has a necessary grievance with the White House, it is wrong to blame the Secret Service here.
After all, the Secret Service uniformed division officer who apparently confiscated Acosta’s pass was only doing his or her job. When Acosta approached the Secret Service West Wing checkpoint, the officer presumably ran his name through the admitted-guest system. When that system returned a do-not-allow-entry response, Secret Service protocol would then have required the officer to confiscate Acosta’s hard pass. The Secret Service officer thus simply did what he was required to do.
That requirement cuts to the crux of the issue: the necessity of the Secret Service’s mission. As we have seen in repeated attempts to intrude on the White House complex, and the recent mail bombing campaign, the Secret Service and FBI grapple with numerous, diverse threats against federal officers. In the context of lapses over the past few years which have allowed unauthorized individuals to access the White House, the Secret Service rightly no longer takes any chances with its adherence to protocol.
It is for that reason — the provision of protective security via the unflinching application of rules — that the officer took Acosta’s pass. Those rules exist to ensure that the U.S. executive branch of government can carry out its constitutional responsibilities effectively. We must remember that CNN’s First Amendment rights are not the only constitutional rights in play here. Most crucially, we must remember that it was the White House that revoked Acosta’s pass, not the Secret Service.
While the courts will ultimately absolve the Secret Service of any wrongdoing (to do otherwise would be to utterly disregard the Secret Service’s effectiveness), CNN shouldn’t wait for that. Instead, Jeff Zucker should direct his attorneys to correct their first submission to the court. Again, CNN has a responsibility to its viewers/readers to see that its rights are protected. In doing so, however, it should confront those responsible for impinging CNN’s rights, not those doing their duty to America.
