The New York Times on Wednesday filed a motion to quash subpoenas the justice department served journalists who reported on security concerns involving the new Air Force One, a gift from Qatar, teeing up a significant court fight over press freedom and the government’s ability to force reporters to identify sources.
“As 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’ rights to report freely on the administration and to provide the public with stories that matter,” David McCraw, the newspaper’s senior vice-president and deputy general counsel, said in a statement.
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.
The subpoenas, some of which were delivered to reporters at their homes, marked a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s 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’s home and the seizure of her electronic devices.
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.
The new jet in question, a present from Qatar that Trump’s administration spent $400m to retrofit and upgrade, recently entered service. But the Republican president used an older model Air Force One jet to leave a Nato summit in Turkey last week.
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.
The justice department has justified the subpoenas by saying that “to be clear, reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are”.
“We value and appreciate the important role that the press plays in this country,” the department said after the Times reported it had received the subpoenas. “But [the] DoJ also plays an important role to make sure that the people entrusted with our nation’s secrets do what they’re supposed to do with that information, which means not sharing classified information.”
The justice department over the years has developed, and revised, internal policies governing how it will respond to news media leaks.
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.
