CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins talks during a live shot in front of the White House on Wednesday. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo White House bars CNN correspondent from open press event

The White House on Wednesday denied access to a CNN reporter for a news conference with President Donald Trump that was open to other journalists.

In a statement released by the network, CNN said White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins was denied access to cover the event with Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, in the Rose Garden.


After posing questions to Trump earlier in the day as the network pool reporter, Collins was told by the White House deputy chief of staff for communications, Bill Shine, and press secretary Sarah Sanders that her questions were “inappropriate,” according to the CNN statement.

Collins had asked the president about his former lawyer Michael Cohen and about reports of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s not accepting a White House invitation for another summit between the two leaders.

CNN on Tuesday evening aired a recording that Cohen made of him and Trump discussing a payment that is believed to have been intended to silence former Playboy model Karen McDougal. McDougal says she had an affair with Trump in 2006, but the president has denied the affair and knowing about any payments to her.

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National security adviser John Bolton said on Wednesday that a second meeting with Putin should wait until after the Robert Mueller investigation was over, a day after a Kremlin aide said that Putin was hesitant to accept the invitation because of the fallout from last week’s summit.

On Wednesday evening, Sanders said: “At the conclusion of a press event in the Oval Office a reporter shouted questions and refused to leave despite repeatedly being asked to do so. Subsequently, our staff informed her she was not welcome to participate in the next event, but made clear that any other journalist from her network could attend. She said it didn’t matter to her because she hadn’t planned to be there anyway. To be clear, we support a free press and ask that everyone be respectful of the presidency and guests at the White House.”

CNN said the questions Collins posed weren’t inappropriate.

“Just because the White House is uncomfortable with a question regarding the news of the day doesn’t mean the question isn’t relevant and shouldn’t be asked,” the network statement said. “This decision to bar a member of the press is retaliatory in nature and not indicative of an open and free press. We demand better.”

Trump and his administration have had a rocky relationship with the media, often calling outlets “fake news” when there are stories written about the White House that they do not agree with.

This is also not the first time the administration has been at odds with a CNN reporter. During a news conference earlier this month with Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, Trump skipped over CNN correspondent Jim Acosta.

The White House Correspondents’ Association on Wednesday strongly condemned what it called “the White House’s misguided and inappropriate decision today to bar one of our members from an open press event after she asked questions they did not like.”

“This type of retaliation is wholly inappropriate, wrong-headed and weak,” Olivier Knox, the WHCA president, said in a statement. “It cannot stand. Reporters asking questions of powerful government officials, up to and including the president, helps hold those people accountable.”

Fox News, the president’s preferred outlet, also criticized the White House decision.

“We stand in strong solidarity with CNN for the right to full access for our journalists as part of a free and unfettered press,” said Jay Wallace, president of Fox News.

Collins said during an interview on CNN that the network had not heard anything else from the White House, but still sent CNN photographers and other reporters to the open event.

“They said I specifically could not go into that press conference,” she said. “I was simply doing my job, asking questions of the president about the news of the day.”

“But clearly,” she said, “the White House was not pleased with those questions we had for the president today.”

