Playboy Magazine White House correspondent and CNN political analyst Brian Karem filed a lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday to regain his suspended White House press pass.
Karem claims the White House violated his Constitutional right to due process and named President Trump and White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham as defendants in the suit, according to CNN Business.
The Playboy employee’s “hard pass” was suspended last week for 30 days and his lawyer, Theodore J. Boutrous, who also represented Jim Acosta when his press pass was revoked, is asking for it’s “immediate restoration.”
As CNN Business reports:
In a statement on Tuesday, he [Boutrous] said the lawsuit is 'asking the federal district court in Washington, D.C. to order the immediate restoration of the press credentials of Playboy White House correspondent Brian Karem and to enjoin the ongoing violation of his First and Fifth Amendment rights. We are confident that the Administration's latest punitive and lawless action against a journalist will not stand, and we look forward to our day in court.'
Grisham said Tuesday in a statement that she stood by her decision to suspend Karem's hard pass.
'The purpose of a hard pass is to provide access to the White House so members of the press can report and ask questions of officials who are taking questions,' she said. 'Mr. Karem did not use the access granted to him for journalistic purposes - in fact, the President had left the event. Instead, he used his press pass to insult invited guests and make comments that threatened to escalate into a physical confrontation to the point that the Secret Service intervened.'
Karem says the White House’s approach to his suspension was “arbitrary” but his run-in with former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka back in July and his claiming independent conservative YouTubers were “eager for demonic possession” don’t seem to really be helping his case.
To get a peek into his personality, take a look at the video (above) from The Washington Post.