AT&T Inc. Chief Executive Randall Stephenson fired back at the White House over its decision to suspend the press credentials of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, charging that the administration had ignored established procedures in a way that appears to violate press-freedom protections.

CNN did more, filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration Tuesday morning in D.C. district court. The suit seeks an immediate restraining order that requires the press pass to be returned to Acosta, citing both a violation of First Amendment rights of freedom of the press and a Fifth Amendment right to due process.

AT&T T, -2.24% , of course, owns CNN after its roughly $81 billion purchase of Time Warner closed earlier this year. Stephenson has been CEO since 2007.

“If the White House wants to pull someone’s press credentials, there is a process,” Stephenson said at the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ Tech D.Live conference late Monday. “That process must be followed, otherwise what is the criteria for pulling somebody’s press credentials?”

“ ‘You didn’t like the line of questioning? Well, that kind of seems to be violative of our protections of freedom of the press.’ ” — Randall Stephenson

With the remarks, there’s a faint echo of the spat — mostly on Twitter and mostly at the orchestration of the president — between the White House and Amazon’s AMZN, -4.12% Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post; its coverage, Trump asserts, is unfairly skewed against him.

The Trump administration said it suspended credentials for Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, because he “placed his hands” on a White House intern who was trying to take a microphone from him at a televised press conference after President Trump grew weary of the questioning.

Read: Trump threatens more reporters’ credentials as he slams ‘stupid’ questioning

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted a video of the incident that appeared to have been edited in a way that made the reporter’s actions look more aggressive, according to an analysis by Storyful.

Read:Kellyanne Conway says Jim Acosta’s ‘karate chop’ clip wasn’t altered, it was ‘sped up’

CNN attorney Ted Olson, in a statement accompanying the announced suit, said that Acosta’s press credentials “must be restored so that all members of the press know they will remain free to ask tough questions, challenge government officials and report the business of the nation to the American people.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association said it backed CNN’s efforts to restore the credentials, adding, “The President of the United States should not be in the business of arbitrarily picking the men and women who cover him.”

Separately, Stephenson at the Monday tech conference called again for clearer standards on net-neutrality rules, saying no company should be allowed to slow the content of another one. “We don’t really have legislative clarity,” he said, adding that companies “should not be able to block you from getting to Netflix NFLX, -4.18% or whatever you want to get to.”

The Trump administration, largely with telecom-giant backing, has pushed to revise Obama-era rules favoring open internet access.

Read:What the midterm election results could mean for net neutrality