Vice President JD Vance was the “senior administration official” who provided information in one of six stories from Politico cited by the White House as its justification for banning the outlet from the presidential press pool, according to a new report.
President Donald Trump announced last week that he was banning Politico, CNN and MS NOW from the pool. That was followed by a lawsuit from the news organizations and a protest by other networks in the TV press pool. By Thursday, Judge Timothy J. Kelly ordered the Trump administration to reinstate access for the outlets.
Before Kelly’s order, the White House press office sent a letter to Politico Tuesday. Former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy said in his Status newsletter that the letter was made public through a government court filing and that in it the White House accused Politico of publishing stories that “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods.”
One of the letters, published this June, cited a “senior administration official” who said that the odds of the U.S. striking a peace deal with Iran were between 80% and 85%. Status learned that the official was actually the vice president and that Vance was on a call authorized by the White House when he provided the statement, the newsletter said.
The Washington Post also reported that the information in that Politico article came from an official press call hosted by the White House – a call it obtained a recording of. It said the administration “required participating journalists to identify the speaker only as a ‘senior administration official.’”
“I think the second thing is we do expect to be signing this agreement over the next few days,” Vance reportedly said during the call. “I can’t give you an exact date. And if I were to give you a confidence that we were going to be finding this agreement, I maybe would have said 75% this morning. It’s probably more like 80, 85% now, but it’s not 100%.”
According to the reports from Status and the Post, Vance spoke to reporters from multiple outlets during the call. Indeed, Mediaite noted that The Associated Press, CNBC and Bloomberg also reported on the comments. Those outlets weren’t included in Trump’s ban last week.
“A White House spokesperson declined to comment to Status or the Post, while Politico did not respond,” Mediaite said.
