(CNN) — Four New York Times journalists who reported on security concerns surrounding a Qatari-gifted jet serving as the new Air Force One have been subpoenaed by the Justice Department, the news outlet reported early Saturday.
The journalists –– Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt –– have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday, according to The Times, which noted federal agents delivered some of the subpoenas to reporters’ homes.
The Times said in its report that it will fight the court order, which is highly unusual and is a direct threat to the news media’s ability to gather information in the public’s interest.
The subpoenas suggest the Trump administration is trying to find out who leaked to The Times before the news organization reported this week that President Donald Trump left a NATO summit in Turkey on the old Air Force One over security concerns from the Secret Service.
The orders for the journalists to testify came after FBI Director Kash Patel met with officials at the White House on Friday to discuss the bureau’s investigation into disclosures about security concerns with the new plane, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Patel also had a conversation on the phone Friday with Trump about the investigation, which he had been tapped to lead, one source said.
Patel was spotted by CNN leaving the White House campus about 6:44 p.m. ET after the meeting, the substance of which has not been previously reported.
Sources told CNN that Trump has been fuming at the reports of security concerns surrounding the $400 million gift from Qatar, and was embarrassed and angry in recent days when it became public that the plane was not equipped enough to be flown directly from Turkey back home.
Trump has repeatedly called for federal investigations over leaks to news outlets. Earlier this year The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal waged a secret legal fight to stop the US government from subpoenaing several reporters in connection with national security leak probes.
Now, The Times finds itself in a similar situation. The organization’s top newsroom attorney, David McCraw, condemned the subpoenas in a statement Saturday morning.
“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” McCraw said.
“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,” he added.
CNN has reached out to the White House and the US attorney’s office in Manhattan for comment.
On Saturday, a Justice Department spokesperson told CNN in a statement that the Times reporters are not the targets of the investigation.
“Every administration has addressed the crime of leaking national security information,” the spokesperson said. “To the extent that we have to investigate breaches of national security, that’s something that we will continue to do. To be clear, reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.”
Concerns about the new jet came to dominate the conversation in Washington this week when Trump abruptly announced he was sending the new plane ahead to England’s Mildenhall Air Force Base just before he departed Turkey. Trump said on social media that the change in planes was simply to give US service members stationed at the base “a chance to tour the Aircraft.”
“Everybody is so excited, and we thought that they should be the first,” he wrote.
But CNN reported Thursday that security personnel felt more comfortable with the president aboard the older Air Force One — which was built from scratch with presidential safety in mind — rather than the plane that had recently been retrofitted after it was donated by Qatar.
Trump then switched planes at a secure US airbase in the UK. He downplayed the idea security was the reason for the switch, though sources have told CNN and other outlets that it was.
“There wasn’t a security concern, except we sent it a little early, same line going back. We sent it a little bit early, so that we could let them see,” he said.
When asked why reporters aboard the plane were told to lower their window shades on the ascent out of Ankara, Trump allowed that security concerns related to Iran could be a factor.
“These are sick people, so I could see something like that,” he said, adding that he was unaware about the directive to press members.
Advocacy groups for journalists called the subpoenas an attack on the public’s right to know about government operations.
“In the end, press freedom is about the rights of the public — to learn how their community and country are being run and to make informed decisions based on independent reporting,” Stephen J. Adler, chairman of the Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement.
“When the public’s right to know is crushed, as the Trump Administration is trying to do with its subpoenas against The New York Times, all of us suffer irreparable harm, as does the freedom upon which this nation is built,” he said.
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said the reporting about the plane switch show “exactly why we need to protect journalists and whistleblowers — without them, we’d never know about this kind of waste and incompetence.”
As for the subpoenas, Stern said, “We’ve long said that when the government claims it needs to investigate journalists to protect national security, it really means its own reputational security. This is as clear an example as you can get.”
The Times reported a senior FBI official contacted the outlet to request the Wednesday story not be published over a national security issue, but the official declined to say what the issue was. The subpoenas issued Friday also lack detail, The Times reported, saying the journalists are being asked to testify “in regard to an alleged violation of criminal law.”
The outlet said the subpoenas were issued by the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, who was nominated by Trump last month to be the next director of national intelligence.
The-CNN-Wire
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