(CNN) — For President Donald Trump, this latest leak hunt is really personal.
Last week, reporters at The New York Times received subpoenas referencing “an alleged violation of federal criminal law” just two days after they published a story contradicting Trump’s claims about the new Qatari-gifted Air Force One.
Journalists involved in the matter strongly suspect that the subpoenas were rushed out in response to Trump’s anger about the news coverage.
Joe Kahn, the executive editor of The Times, called the subpoenas “impulsive” in a memo to staffers denouncing the “naked attempt to intimidate individual reporters” and to prevent reporting.
The court orders compel the reporters to testify before a grand jury about their anonymous sources, though The Times will fight to stop that from happening.
“The law protects news gatherers from this sort of retaliatory abuse of prosecutorial power,” Kahn wrote. “It is essential that the courts reaffirm that protection and quash this overreach. We are confident they will in this case.”
While the use of subpoena power against journalists has always been highly controversial, officials in past administrations sometimes justified it by arguing it was used as a last resort, after other investigative avenues were exhausted.
This time, the subpoenas seem more like a first step. FBI director Kash Patel was called to the White House for meetings about the leak investigation on Friday, shortly before the subpoenas were delivered to Times reporters.
Renowned First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams told CNN, “I can’t think of another such conflict in which the president himself is so personally involved… Nor can I think of one in which there is every reason to think that the president himself was personally involved in the decision to seek to force the press to reveal its sources.”
“Most telling of all,” Abrams added, “I can’t think of a situation in which the public has had such a genuine and appropriate interest in the topic about which the article dealt.”
The plane gift was already highly controversial; figures across the political spectrum bashed the plan to accept the luxurious plane from Qatar last year, and some likened it to a “bribe.”
Trump seemed eager to show off the new jet, however. “The compressed timetable set by the president limited the modifications to the plane,” The Associated Press reported on July 1, the day Trump proudly took his maiden voyage on board.
“Images of the jet captured since its unveiling and analyzed by the Associated Press show that it is not equipped with at least some of the same missile detection and countermeasure systems as the outgoing Cold War-era jets,” the news outlet said.
Indeed, that information was ascertained just by looking at the plane up close.
But when Trump announced, during a NATO summit last Wednesday, that he wouldn’t be flying the Qatari-gifted plane out of Turkey, he claimed the change had nothing to do with security concerns.
He said the plane was being sent to England’s Mildenhall Air Force Base to give US service members “a chance to tour the aircraft.”
Anonymous sources undermined that claim right away. The Times’ first report was titled “Security precaution led Trump to use old Air Force One in leaving Turkey.”
The contradiction between Trump’s claims and credible information from government sources made the matter even more newsworthy.
CNN and other news outlets published similar reports that security concerns actually prompted the plane swap.
Trump was “angry and embarrassed that it had been public,” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins later reported.
During Trump’s two terms in office, there have been many episodes like this, in which the president’s dubious assertions have been contradicted by people within his own government.
The difference this time is that the Justice Department issued subpoenas in response, and the Times immediately publicized the receipt of those subpoenas.
The Justice Department said it is not targeting reporters; it is pursuing the leakers of classified information.
But the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which advocates for newsrooms, pointed out that the Justice Department maintains a policy that prosecutors “pursue non-media leads before seeking to compel testimony from journalists through subpoenas.”
The Justice Department has also pursued reporters’ phone and email records while pursuing leakers in the past, a practice widely condemned by press freedom groups.
The Biden administration agreed to tighten regulations on subpoenas and search warrants to media outlets.
Xochitl Hinojosa, who was a Justice Department spokeswoman in the Biden administration, wrote on X, “You can investigate and prosecute leaks of classified info within your own government without going after reporters. We did it successfully.”
But last year the Trump administration rolled that back and made it easier for investigators to obtain records and compel testimony from reporters.
Pam Bondi, the attorney general at the time, seemed to be following Trump’s lead, since he has decried leaks and threatened jail time for journalists who refuse to cough up sources.
Fights over subpoenas to news organizations sometimes transpire in secret. But last May, the Wall Street Journal disclosed that several of its reporters had received court orders to testify.
The orders came after Trump pushed the Justice Department to subpoena reporters over alleged leaks relating to the Iran war. Trump wrote the word “Treason” in Sharpie on top of a stack of printed articles and handed it to Bondi’s successor, acting attorney general Todd Blanche, CNN reported at the time.
The articles in question were not treasonous, but reporters from the Journal and Washington Post were targeted nevertheless. The Justice Department withdrew those subpoenas after a secret legal fight.
Kahn’s memo to The Times newsroom said five reporters either received or “expect to receive” subpoenas relating to the Air Force One reporting.
He called the reporters “consummate professionals who report diligently and responsibly on national security and the presidency.”
“The security of the jets used as Air Force One, which transport not only the president but also hundreds of government officials and staff, members of Congress, journalists and invited guests, is manifestly in the public interest,” Kahn said. “The stories we published were carefully reported and edited. Their work should make us all proud.”
Abrams told CNN that the reporting last week, and now the fight over the subpoenas, highlights several crucial follow-up storylines: “The wisdom of the President in accepting the ‘gift’ plane: the safety of the president after deciding to accept it: and the candor of the administration in claiming in broad language that the plane was in all respects safe.”
The-CNN-Wire
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