The Trump administration issued subpoenas to multiple New York Times journalists this week after they wrote a story about security issues on the president’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One, the newspaper reported Saturday.
The Times said the subpoenas, some of which were delivered by federal agents to personal addresses, ordered the reporters to appear before a federal grand jury in New York next Wednesday. David McCraw, the top newsroom lawyer for The Times, called the court order an attack on press freedom.
“Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used,” McCraw said in a statement. “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 from doing their jobs.”
The Justice Department said in a statement to NOTUS that it was targeting leakers of classified information, not reporters.
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“We recognize there may always be natural tension there,” the statement said, “but we are not going to ignore the law and stop investigating the people who work in the administration and think it’s okay to leak classified information impacting national security.”
On Wednesday, Times journalists Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt reported that the Secret Service asked President Donald Trump to swap planes on his return flight to the United States from the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, as a security precaution.
Sources familiar with the matter told CNN that the subpoenas came after FBI Director Kash Patel met with White House officials on Friday over an investigation into leaks regarding security concerns about the new aircraft.
An Associated Press analysis from earlier this month revealed that the Qatari-donated plane did not appear to have some of the missile detection software and countermeasure systems as the outgoing Cold War-era jets.
Before he departed Turkey on Wednesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he’d be flying on the old Air Force One to an air base in the United Kingdom. He said he was doing so “for old time’s sake.”
Reporters asked Trump at a news conference in Turkey whether the change of aircraft was due to security concerns.
“I’m No. 1 on the kill list for Iran. They’re lovely people. I’m No. 1,” Trump replied on his last day in the country. “So, I don’t know. I can’t tell you that, but I don’t really care, because I’m doing my job.”
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