WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for ABC on Tuesday asked a federal judge to prevent the Trump administration from conducting an unusual, early review of its broadcast licenses, likening it to a looming execution by guillotine that was already chilling the network’s editorial decisions just weeks before the U.S. midterm elections.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan did not immediately rule on ABC’s request for a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Federal Communications Commission from conducting its early review, which it said was unconstitutional, a violation of free speech and a retaliation for content President Donald Trump dislikes.
A government attorney argued that, as a procedural matter, the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over ABC’s case because it belongs in a different venue. The government also challenged the network’s First Amendment arguments, and said ABC had failed to show it suffered irreparable harm.
A ruling was not expected until at least mid-October. After extensively questioning both sides, she asked them to submit brief additional arguments by Oct. 9, for the government, and Oct. 14, for ABC.
ABC and its parent company, Disney, sued the FCC and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr in August, several months after the commission ordered eight ABC-owned stations to submit renewal applications for their broadcast licenses years ahead of schedule.
The case is one of several ongoing legal battles between Trump’s Republican administration and news outlets — including The Associated Press — over their coverage and access to the executive branch since Trump returned to the White House for a second term.
At Tuesday's two-hour hearing, ABC attorney Beth Wilkinson harkened back to the French Revolution to illustrate what she called the chilling effect that the renewal process was having on the network. It was, she said, like having one's “head on the guillotine,” forced to wonder “if anything we say is going to make it come down.”
“Our editorial decisions are being affected right now,” Wilkinson said, noting that the U.S. midterm elections are fast approaching. “We are watching everything that we do.”
She reiterated the First Amendment argument ABC has been making since the beginning — that it was being targeted for its content. “President Donald Trump has made his stance clear over and over again,” Wilkinson said. “What he says is because of that content, because of that speech, ABC should lose its license.
“These are blatant violations of the U.S. Constitution,” she said, calling it a threat not just to ABC but to all broadcast media.
Dimitar Georgiev-Remmel, the Department of Justice attorney, explicitly rejected the guillotine analogy.
Georgiev-Remmel argued that the court lacked jurisdiction, but that even if it decided it had jurisdiction, a preliminary injunction should still be denied. He said ABC had not established a likelihood of success on the merits of the case, and also had not established irreparable harm, because the network’s eight licenses remain valid.
Issuing a preliminary injunction at ABC’s request would mean “allowing them to sidestep” the path that Congress has set up for regulatory action appeals, Georgiev-Remmel said.
Asked by the judge what irreparable harm ABC had suffered, Wilkinson answered: “The irreparable injury is the chill, and the threat of retaliation for First Amendment speech and editorial decisions ABC makes every day.”
In its lawsuit, ABC had asked the judge to temporarily prohibit the FCC from taking any further action related to its license renewal proceedings. ABC also sought to prohibit the commission from trying to coerce or threaten the network to alter its “exercise of editorial discretion.”
“The First Amendment demands an immediate end to the Commission’s retaliatory campaign,” ABC attorneys wrote.
Carr, a Trump ally, ordered the early review of the stations’ licenses in April — just after a joke by ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel infuriated Trump, who called for the comedian's firing.
ABC also had been fighting Carr’s efforts to make the morning talk show “The View” subject to equal-time rules. Carr defended his agency’s actions against ABC by saying broadcasters have a duty to “operate in the public interest.”
Government attorneys urged the court to dismiss ABC’s lawsuit, accusing the network of trying to prematurely ward off scrutiny by federal regulators.
“To foreclose the Commission from using all the tools at its disposal to investigate whether Plaintiffs are meeting their statutory and regulatory duties would seriously harm both the government and the public,” Justice Department lawyers wrote.
AliKhan was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
Noveck reported from New York, and Boone from Boise, Idaho.
FILE - Members of the press appear in the spin room during a presidential debate between Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, on screen at left, and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, right, Sept. 10, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)
FILE - Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr testifies before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Communications and Technology oversight hearing of the Federal Communications Commission on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for a former Olympian whom the Justice Department charged with intentionally damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, only to abruptly drop the case after determining he was not responsible, urged two government watchdogs on Tuesday to examine what they say was a flawed investigation and prosecution.
The attorneys for David Hearn said in a letter to the inspectors general for the departments of Justice and Interior that “incompetence and misconduct" were committed by government officials operating under pressure from President Donald Trump, and that watchdog investigations were needed “to determine what happened inside their agencies that led to the shocking and indefensible treatment” of their client.
The letter was filed days after a District of Columbia judge permanently dismissed the case, ending a brief prosecution derided by defense lawyers and other critics as an abuse of government power pushed by a president who insisted vandalism, not human error, was to blame for damage at the landmark. The request indicates that Hearn's lawyers see an additional need for accountability even after the dismissal of the legal proceedings.
“In light of these findings and the government’s own admissions, a critical purpose of the requested investigations is to collect the facts — through witness interviews and the collection and analysis of electronic media and documents — necessary to hold accountable the individuals and groups who failed Mr. Hearn, the criminal justice system, and the public,” the lawyers wrote.
“These events," they said, "demand accountability and full and unconstrained investigations by your offices.”
The Justice Department inspector general's office declined to comment on whether it would act on the lawyers' request. A phone message seeking comment with the Interior Department's inspector general's office was not immediately returned.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman on Thursday dismissed the case against Hearn with “prejudice,” which would block U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office from refiling the felony charge against him. He said the decision was warranted by the case's “exceptional circumstances” and agreed with defense attorneys that the government “shot first and asked questions later” by charging Hearn in a "lightning-fast indictment process.”
Pirro moved to dismiss the case in July weeks after it was brought, saying newly produced evidence from the Interior Department showed Hearn was not responsible for damage to the pool’s lining. She attributed the damage instead to a botched installation by a contractor as well as a rush to complete the project in time for this summer’s America 250 celebration in Washington.
But Hearn's lawyers say in their letter that the evidence that established their client's innocence had been in the Justice Department's possession for weeks and was “simply ignored.” They asked the department's inspector general to investigate why prosecutors “rushed to indict” under what they said was political pressure from Trump, who had launched a massive renovation project before the anniversary celebrations and later accused Pirro of having “choked” and “folded like an umbrella" when she dismissed the case.
The attorneys also called on the watchdog to investigate, among other things, whether prosecutors failed to disclose exculpatory information in their possession and prosecutors relied on a grand jury witness who presented an unsupported figure on monetary damages to the pool; whether comments Pirro made at the indictment press conference violated Justice Department policy; and whether Pirro also violated policy by approaching and questioning a defense expert.
“The record reflects an indictment obtained through unusual haste and a prosecution shaped from the outset by political pressure and built on an inadequate investigation," they said, adding, “The sprint to charge Mr. Hearn mirrored the rushed renovation itself, which the President had publicly committed to completing by a fixed deadline.”
Pirro's office did not return an email seeking comment.
Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Maryland, competed in three Summer Olympics, earning his best finish, ninth, at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee says on its website.
He has said he was on a bike ride on June 19 when he reached in to examine the pool’s newly peeled coating and briefly touched a chunk attached to the side of the pool. But he said he obeyed a park worker’s command to let go of it. He was nonetheless stopped by police officers, arrested and detained for nearly five hours.
He was indicted on one count of property destruction, a charge carrying a maximum 10-year prison sentence.
His lawyers questioned whether prosecutors properly presented the grand jury with adequate evidence to support the charge and the amount of damage alleged by the government.
They say prosecutors failed to “critically examine” allegations of a supposedly key witness whose claims about her interactions with Hearn were contradicted by video evidence, and withheld from the defense team body-worn camera recordings and other evidence.
And they also challenge Pirro herself over her actions, saying she approached a defense expert at the pool on July 17 and asked about his conclusions and the results of his work. No report of that interaction has been produced to defense lawyers, they say.
“A U.S. Attorney who personally interrogates a represented defendant’s testifying expert, in the field, surrounded by her own staff and without notice to counsel, is not gathering evidence — she is testing how the defense intends to prove its case, and doing so in a setting that essentially held the expert captive,” the letter states.
The letter also urges the Interior Department's inspector general to investigate questions including who made the decision “to proceed with an unqualified contractor;" why work on the pool proceeded despite known risks; why the department relied on National Guardsmen to detain Hearn; and why officials made “publicly defamatory” statements even after learning of the dismissal of the case.
Asked for comment, the Interior Department said that “Mr. Hearn admitted to officers that he was tampering with the Reflecting Pool.” His lawyers said in response that Hearn “has never used the word ‘tampering.’ He touched the loose liner in the Reflecting Pool. Big Difference.”
FILE - Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, left, and his attorney Norm Eisen, right, leave the District of Columbia Courthouse, Sept. 4, 2026, in Washington, following a hearing concerning the dismissal of charges against him for allegedly damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - Work continues on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool at the National Mall in Washington, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
FILE - Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, speaks to reporters outside the District of Columbia Courthouse, Sept. 4, 2026, in Washington, following a hearing concerning the dismissal of charges against him for allegedly damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - Work continues on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Oct. 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
FILE - The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is seen with police line yellow tape at the National Mall, Sept. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
