President Donald Trump boards Air Force One as he departs for a state visit to Britain, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, September 16, 2025. REUTERS Kevin Lamarque
A top legal expert told MS NOW that "precious little" legal recourse exists to punish President Donald Trump's officials for going along with his new press ban and his many other illegal actions.
Trump last week announced out of nowhere on Truth Social that he was banning MS NOW, CNN and Politico from the White House, rehashing his longstanding complaints about "fake news" and accusing the networks of intentionally lying about him. The fallout from this ban was swift and damning, with numerous other news outlets condemning the decision and offering support for the three targeted outlets. On Monday, the entirety of the White House press pool announced that it would not be covering presidential events in solidarity, amounting to a boycott of the White House by the major news networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.
Additionally, the three targeted networks filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, calling the ban a blatant violation of the First Amendment. During a Monday afternoon appearance on MS NOW, legal analyst and former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann told host Nicole Wallace that the networks were almost guaranteed to win the suit, stressing that the result is so likely that he was breaking his personal rule against making predictions.
"You're going to win. It's that simple," Weissmann said. "This is not a close case ... This is a due process violation. It is a First Amendment violation. You know, Nicole, you know me well enough that I usually don't engage in predictions or I say words like, 'it seems' or 'there's a fair likelihood,' et cetera. This is a slam dunk. And the president has to know it."
Later in the conversation, Weissmann lamented that there was "precious little" to be done legally to hold Trump officials to account for enabling this ban and the president's other unlawful actions.
"Precious little, and it'salmost by design," Weissmann said. "So onthe one hand, you could saythat there's potential federalliability, but remember, thepresident has the pardon power. And so you can be sure thatwhen he leaves office, there isgoing to be a flurry of pardons.He's already talked about that.And he obviously has issuedalready more pardons than anypresident that we've ever seenin connection with January 6thand others. The one thing thatholds lawyers to account isthat lawyers can be sanctionedand they can be disbarred."
He added later: "This is a long way of saying that for people who are really upset and shocked by this, for this kind of blatant, unconstitutional activity, it is a reason to vote. And I'm not saying Democratic or Republican. I'm just saying, vote for somebody who believes in the rule of law."
"Which is only the Democratic Party as we meet here today," Wallace added in response.