Judge orders reinstatement of WH credentials for Playboy’s trouble-making reporter

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A federal judge ruled against the White House for revoking the press pass of Playboy correspondent Brian Karem, a CNN contributor, over a Rose Garden confrontation in July with former White House aide Sebastian Gorka.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, a Barack Obama appointee, handed down the ruling, marking the second time a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reinstate a reporter’s pass, according to Fox News.

“White House events appear to vary greatly in character,” Contreras wrote in his opinion. “Thus, without any contextual guideposts, ‘professionalism,’ standing alone, remains too murky to provide fair notice here.”

“Karem has shown that even the temporary suspension of his pass inflicts irreparable harm on his First Amendment rights,” the judge concluded.

In November, a judge ordered the White House to restore the credentials of CNN’s narcissistic reporter Jim Acosta after then-press secretary Sarah Sanders pulled his “hard pass.”

Karem took to social media to celebrate and praise his attorney — he used the same attorney CNN used in challenging Acosta’s revocation.

In a juvenile-like manner, he tagged President Trump, as he declared: “Free Speech and Due process win!”

In a further display of childish one-upmanship, Karem tweeted a photo of himself in the White House briefing room, prompting a social media user to reply: “It’s just that kind of snarky, fatalistic attitude that got you kicked out in the first place.”

The explosive encounter with Gorka was marked by the “journalist” challenging the former White House aide to out to “go outside” — never mind they were in the Rose Garden at the time.

A Secret Service agent intervened to prevent further escalation after Gorka called his bluff.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who said Karem had violated the standards of “professionalism” and “decorum” and suspended him last month for 30 days, disagreed with the ruling.

“We disagree with the decision of the District Court to issue an injunction that essentially gives free reign to members of the press to engage in unprofessional, disruptive conduct at the White House,” Grisham said in a statement.

“Mr. Karem’s conduct, including threatening to escalate a verbal confrontation into a physical one to the point that a Secret Service agent intervened, clearly breached well-understood norms of professional conduct,” she added. “The Press Secretary must have the ability to deter such unacceptable conduct.“

But then, Karem has an established track record of confrontations, as seen when he screamed at Sanders last year over the treatment of illegal immigrant children.

If that’s not enough to bring you to question Karem’s journalist credentials, author James Hassin took to Twitter to share a few other examples of the reporter’s actions.

Here’s a sampling of other responses from Twitter:

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