President Donald Trump's Pentagon faces a new legal threat after a Department of Defense official admitted to tossing up a word salad press policy in response to a court order.
On Monday, the Pentagon released a new press policy after a federal judge ruled that the agency's current policy is unconstitutional, The New York Times reported. Those policies included closing the Pentagon workspace used by journalists and requiring any journalist seeking physical access to the building to be escorted.
Cmdr. Tim Parlatore, a special adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, told the Times in an interview on Monday that the new policy essentially uses "more words to say the same thing and to foreclose creative misinterpretations."
Lawyers representing the Times cited that interview in a court filing on Tuesday seeking to have the Pentagon's interim policy thrown out.
"Rather than comply with the Court’s Order and accompanying Opinion, Defendants are contemptuously defying it—both in letter and spirit in a newly released 'interim' policy," the lawyers argued. "Among other things, for the first time in history, the Interim Policy bars reporters with press passes from entering the building without an escort, sets up unprecedented rules governing when a reporter can offer anonymity to a source, and leaves in place provisions that this Court’s Order struck."
