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Federal prosecutors issued subpoenas late Friday compelling four New York Times journalists to reveal their sources for two stories about security shortcomings on the new Qatari-gifted presidential jet, the news organization said.
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The Times reported earlier this week that the Secret Service advised Trump to take the older jet used as Air Force One to return from Turkey after a NATO meeting because the new jet lacked some of the advanced security features of the older aircraft, including antimissile capabilities. The decision came after reports that Israel had told Trump Iran was plotting to kill him. Turkey borders Iran.
White House spokesman Steven Cheung has criticized other reporters for similar stories about Air Force One earlier this week. Cheung was quoted in those stories, denying any security concerns.
During his second term, President Donald Trump has escalated his attacks on the media. His administration has issued similar subpoenas to other newspapers and searched the home of a Washington Post reporter, while FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has pressured networks into punishing comics for criticizing him.
Trump has also personally sued several newspapers, including the Times, over stories he found objectionable.
“This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists,” David McCraw, the Times’s lawyer, wrote in a statement.
The four subpoenaed journalists are Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt.
“We value and appreciate the important role that the press plays in this country,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement, noting the reporters are not the targets of its ongoing investigation. “We recognize there may always be natural tension there, but we are not going to ignore the law and stop investigating the people who work in the administration and think it’s ok to leak classified information impacting national security.”
The Trump Justice Department’s own policies say that issuing subpoenas to reporters is an “extraordinary step” that should only be taken as a last resort and must be approved by the attorney general in almost all cases. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has previously worked as a personal attorney for Trump.
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The White House did not respond to a request for comment Saturday on the subpoenas.
“This is a revelation that the administration obviously doesn’t want the public to know, and the administration appears to be upset about, but it has nothing to do with national security,” said Seth Stern, advocacy chief for the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “We’ve seen the Trump administration’s subpoenas and investigations halted and struck down any number of times because they’re using the criminal justice system to pursue political vendettas and critics rather than to investigate crime in good faith, and I think this case is an example of that.”
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton, who has been nominated by Trump to be director of national intelligence, issued the subpoenas. Clayton’s confirmation hearing is scheduled next week in the Senate, along with the confirmation hearing for Blanche to be attorney general.
Before the stories were published, a senior FBI official contacted the New York Times to try and stop their release, saying there were national security concerns and asked the newspaper to disclose its sources, the Times reported. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment when contacted outside of regular business hours.
The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have fought similar subpoenas in recent months, but the government withdrew those subpoenas last month, the New York Times reported. Federal agents also searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson in January for allegedly obtaining and reporting on classified information.
Reporting on classified information is not a crime in the U.S., but giving classified information to reporters is.
The New York Times’ most famous fight against government efforts to prevent reporting tied to national security before was the case known as the Pentagon Papers. President Richard Nixon attempted to block the Times from reporting on documents that revealed the U.S. government knew it was losing the war in Vietnam. The resulting lawsuit made its way to the Supreme Court, which in a landmark opinion, sided with the newspaper and said the government cannot stop journalists from reporting due to vague claims about national security concerns.
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