The US Department of Justice supports the president's right to ban three major media outlets from entering the White House

The US Justice Department announced late Tuesday evening that the president has the right to bar three major national media outlets from areas inside the White House, claiming that their news coverage may pose a threat to national security.

A legal brief filed by the Trump administration with the court late Tuesday night said that “access to the White House is a privilege, not a right,” despite the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of the press.

Administration lawyers argued that Trump has the authority to control access to areas inside the White House, to protect national security information that may be located in the presidential complex.

“At the very least, the government could control journalists’ access to restricted presidential areas, such as the Oval Office, even if for viewpoint-based discrimination reasons,” the Justice Department wrote in the brief filed with the court.

The Department added: "The President has concluded that Plaintiffs have been involved in a number of instances in which their press coverage posed a threat to national security; such coverage raises direct national security concerns."

The memos came on the eve of an emergency hearing before federal Judge Timothy Kelly in Washington, DC. CNN, MSNBC and Politico are demanding that the court immediately restore her access to the White House.

The case is an important test of First Amendment protections for press freedom, and has prompted a suspension of live coverage of Trump's activities by major television networks, National Public Radio (NPR), as well as photojournalists on the White House press corps.

While the Department of Justice defends the president's powers, the federal court in Washington, D.C., has consistently restored journalists' right to enter the White House whenever successive administrations have tried to revoke that right, including through rulings that affirmed protections for press freedom and due process guarantees for the media.