{"id":937685,"date":"2026-07-16T00:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T00:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/937685\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T00:26:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T00:26:15","slug":"new-york-times-files-motion-to-quash-subpoenas-served-on-journalists-over-air-force-one-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/937685\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Times files motion to quash subpoenas served on journalists over Air Force One coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON<\/strong> \u2013 The New York Times on Wednesday filed a motion to quash subpoenas that the Justice Department served on journalists who reported on security concerns involving the new, Qatari-gifted Air Force One<\/a>, teeing up a significant court fight over press freedom and the government\u2019s ability to force reporters to identify sources.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we set out in our motion, these subpoenas are brought in bad faith to punish The Times for its coverage. They violate the constitutional rights of The Times and its journalists. We are going to court to defend our journalists\u2019 rights to report freely on the administration and to provide the public with stories that matter,\u201d David McCraw, the newspaper\u2019s senior vice president and deputy general counsel, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The filing was made under seal in the Southern District of New York, where the journalists were summoned in subpoenas delivered last Friday to testify before a federal grand jury.<\/p>\n

The subpoenas, some of which were delivered to reporters at their homes, marked a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration\u2019s crackdown on media leaks that free press advocates swiftly condemned as a government effort to intimidate news organizations. It followed an FBI search earlier this year of a Washington Post reporter\u2019s home and the seizure of her electronic devices. <\/p>\n

The subpoenas sought to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan this week after they reported on security concerns involving the new Air Force One<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The new jet in question, a present from Qatar that Trump\u2019s administration spent $400 million to retrofit and upgrade, recently entered service<\/a>. But the Republican president used an older model Air Force One jet<\/a> to leave a NATO summit<\/a> in Turkey last week.<\/p>\n

The Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that the switch had come at the urging of the Secret Service and that the newer plane lacked some of the advanced security features of the older aircraft, including antimissile capabilities. On social media, Trump denied security concerns.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department has justified the subpoenas by saying that \u201cto be clear, reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe value and appreciate the important role that the press plays in this country,\u201d the department said after the Times reported it had received the subpoenas. \u201cBut DOJ also plays an important role to make sure that the people entrusted with our nation\u2019s secrets do what they\u2019re supposed to do with that information, which means not sharing classified information.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Justice Department over the years has developed, and revised, internal policies governing how it will respond to news media leaks.<\/p>\n

Though the department across presidential administrations has periodically seized the phone records of individual journalists in hopes of identifying sources for national security stories, it is extremely rare for the government to attempt to compel a reporter to reveal their sources before a grand jury.<\/p>\n

In April 2025, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded a policy from President Joe Biden\u2019s Democratic administration that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations \u2014 a practice long decried by news organizations and press freedom groups. The moves again gave prosecutors the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make \u201cunauthorized disclosures\u201d to journalists.<\/p>\n

A memo Bondi issued said members of the press are \u201cpresumptively entitled to advance notice of such investigative activities,\u201d and subpoenas are to be \u201cnarrowly drawn.\u201d Warrants must also include \u201cprotocols designed to limit the scope of intrusion into potentially protected materials or newsgathering activities,\u201d the memo stated.<\/p>\n

In January, FBI agents searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, who has been covering Trump\u2019s transformation of the federal government, as part of a leak investigation into a Pentagon contractor accused of taking home classified information.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2013 The New York Times on Wednesday filed a motion to quash subpoenas that the Justice Department…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":937686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,374191,69,171,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,93],"class_list":["post-937685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-david-mccraw","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-washington-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116926820220993842","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/937686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}