The New York Times said that at least four of its journalists received subpoenas on Friday from the Justice Department following their report on concerns over insufficient security on the new, Qatari-donated Air Force One.
The Times said that federal agents went to some of the reporters’ homes to deliver their subpoenas—an act of intimidation that David McRaw, the paper’s top newsroom lawyer, called “an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country.”
The subpoenas order the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury on Wednesday but, according to the Times, do not clearly indicate what they are expected to testify on. The newspaper also said the subpoenas were issued by Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York and Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence.
On Wednesday, four New York Times reporters wrote that security concerns led Trump to use the old old Air Force One jet that same day to leave the NATO summit in Turkey, following a recommendation from the Secret Service. The reporters cited “people briefed on the plans” who called the move a precautionary measure due to antagonistic relations with Iran.
When Trump presented the new $400 million jet from Qatar last month, he boasted that it “is considered the world’s most luxurious plane” and was “built at a level that will probably never be seen again.” In addition to questions over the propriety of accepting a donation from a foreign government, the “luxurious plane” required the Air Force to beef up the jet’s security. In fact, the Air Force has reportedly been working on upgrading security since September, likely at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The subpoenas represent yet another significant attack on press freedom by the Trump administration. The Times said that before its Wednesday story was published, a senior FBI official asked the newsroom not to release it due to an issue of national security but did not offer further explanation.
“When the government claims it needs to investigate journalists to protect national security, it really means its own reputational security,” Seth Stern, the chief of advocacy of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit that supports journalists with digitally-secure communication tools, said in a Saturday statement. “The administration’s embarrassment that it reportedly charged taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit a flying bribe that still isn’t secure enough for hostile times does not supersede the need for a free and independent press.”