{"id":954794,"date":"2026-07-23T21:05:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T21:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/954794\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T21:05:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T21:05:15","slug":"government-drops-subpoenas-for-new-york-times-reporters-over-trump-jet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/954794\/","title":{"rendered":"Government drops subpoenas for New York Times reporters over Trump jet"},"content":{"rendered":"

By MICHAEL R. SISAK, ERIC TUCKER and LARRY NEUMEISTER<\/strong><\/p>\n

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Criticized by a federal judge for sloppy legal work, the government on Thursday withdrew subpoenas that would have compelled three New York Times reporters to testify about their sources for articles about President Donald Trump\u2019s Qatari-gifted\u00a0Air Force One jet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The withdrawals in U.S. District Court followed a remarkable back and forth between a visibly irritated Judge Arun Subramanian and government attorneys. They come at a time when the Trump administration is vigorously going after news organizations whose reporting and coverage it doesn\u2019t like \u2014 and also trying to crack down on leaks inside the government.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s retreat in the face of vigorous legal opposition and a stern reprimand from a judge marked the latest instance of the Justice Department pulling back on its aggressive efforts to compel journalists to identify their sources before a grand jury.\u00a0The administration recently withdrew similar subpoenas<\/a>\u00a0that sought to compel testimony in Virginia from journalists for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n

Subramanian said he otherwise would have granted the newspaper\u2019s request to reject the subpoenas because laws and regulations pertaining to subpoenas served on journalists maintain that they should be issued as a last resort in an investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cSubpoenas are the last step, not the first step, but the last step,\u201d the judge said, citing rules set to protect against violations of the First Amendment. He said the government\u2019s actions had turned the law and the regulations \u201con its head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Government attorneys upbraided by judge<\/p>\n

Subramanian noted that with protections for journalists at stake, the government was required to ensure it could not obtain what it needed from any other sources before issuing subpoenas to journalists.<\/p>\n

\u201cSubpoenas are not the first thing you do, they are the last thing you do,\u201d he said in a proceeding in which he became increasingly heated and testy in his questioning of government lawyers about steps they took in their investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you see something like this, if this were a civil proceeding, what I would normally do is ask the parties to show causes why sanctions should not be issued,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n

The hearing was public despite efforts by the Trump administration to keep secret the litigation spawned by subpoenas it served on the Times\u2019 journalists to try to get them to divulge their sources.<\/p>\n

The newspaper\u2019s lawyers had challenged the validity of the grand jury subpoenas, along with subpoenas issued for phone records of several Times journalists and some of their relatives. Senior senior Times officials, including the paper\u2019s managing editor and general counsel, sat in the gallery watching during Thursday\u2019s proceedings.<\/p>\n

The request for phone records raised questions about the extent of the investigation being carried out by the Justice Department.<\/p>\n

Court action comes after reporting on new Air Force One jet<\/p>\n

The new jet in question, a present from Qatar that Trump\u2019s administration spent $400 million to retrofit and upgrade, recently\u00a0entered service<\/a>. But Trump used\u00a0an older model Air Force One jet<\/a>\u00a0to leave\u00a0a NATO summit<\/a>\u00a0in Turkey earlier this month.<\/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 Air Force One aircraft, including antimissile capabilities. On social media, Trump rejected claims of security concerns.<\/p>\n

The Times wrote in a letter to the judge several days ago that two subpoenas seek records beginning on Jan. 1, long before the newspaper published articles on July 8 and July 9 that became the basis for the grand jury subpoenas.<\/p>\n

It said that lengthy stretch of records sought would indicate that the purpose of the subpoenas might have been \u201cto forage for information about the Journalists\u2019 source relationships more broadly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times argued for the phone records subpoenas to be disallowed on the grounds that the government had acted in \u201cbad faith\u201d and ignored its own protocols by not giving the journalists advance notice that records were being sought and by demanding the information \u201cwithout first conducting any serious investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Justice Department has\u00a0justified the grand jury subpoenas<\/a>\u00a0by saying that \u201creporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Justice Department also said it had complied with its own regulations in issuing the subpoenas and had taken investigative steps before seeking them. It said it was authorized to delay disclosing the subpoenas but decided to alert the journalists\u2019 lawyers so they could challenge them.<\/p>\n

The additional subpoenas included a request for phone records of one reporter\u2019s mother and two of the journalists\u2019 spouses. The motion noted that the mother in question is a mental health professional with confidential client relationships and that one of the two spouses is the general counsel of a law firm.<\/p>\n

Associated Press Writer Eric Tucker reported from Washington<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By MICHAEL R. SISAK, ERIC TUCKER and LARRY NEUMEISTER NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Criticized by a federal judge…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":954795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[384110,5229,29535,23515,78389,405,403,6985,5226,5225,5228,5227,79361,277,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-954794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-air-force-one-jet","tag-america","tag-first-amendment","tag-journalism","tag-judge-arun-subramanian","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-times","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-subpoenas","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954794","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=954794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}